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Inspired by Paul Newman's visit to Southern Africa earlier that year, the Hole in the Wall Camps' Africa Initiative began with a pilot program in Botswana's Okavango Delta in December 2001. Expanding our mission to include HIV/AIDS orphans and vulnerable children, Hole in the Wall Camps and Wilderness Safaris, a leading safari company in Southern Africa, have created a unique partnership that combines therapeutic recreation, conservation education, wilderness awareness, and "plain old fun" into a carefully crafted psychosocial intervention aimed at inspiring and motivating children whose sense of their own potential has been diminished.

Since that first program, our Africa Initiative has engaged with additional local partners, Mokolodi Nature Reserve in Botswana and The Valley Trust in Durban, South Africa, to serve children in and around their home communities. The explicit role of the Association with these programs is as catalyst, provider of technical assistance, camp program development, and (in some cases) provider of seed funding. The Association's goal for these projects is to build community capacity and thereby help create self-sufficient programs.

Our programs in Africa serve HIV+ children, HIV/AIDS orphans, and children living with HIV+ parents, all children who have had their childhood interrupted. Through their experiences with us children recapture a sense of their own potential, recover a sense of hope, and strengthen their own capacity to deal with life's challenges.

WHAT WE HAVE DONE SO FAR

* With our partners we have served more than 2000 orphans and vulnerable children
* We have trained more than 180 local staff in Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, and South Africa
* We have sent more than 20 of our most experienced program staff as "volunteer mentors" to work with our partner staff in program design and delivery
* We have developed a staff exchange program through which local staff who demonstrate leadership ability spend two weeks in advanced training at one of the Association's existing camps in the US or Ireland, and then participate in a follow-up "Train the Trainers" workshop in South Africa
* We have developed a comprehensive guidebook which takes stakeholders and staff through the step-by-step process of creating a camp program

2003-04 AFRICA INITIATIVE PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS:

Boitumelo Mo Nageng (Happiness in the Wilderness) - Botswana

Boitumelo Mo Nageng is a joint venture between the Education Center at Mokolodi Nature Reserve outside Gaborone, AHITWC, Salvation Army Psycho-Social Support Initiative (SAPPSI), and Regional Psycho-Social Support Initiative (REPSSI). This collaborative camp project brought the four organizations together for the first time in 2002 when 200 HIV/AIDS affected children from a number of local orphan care programs were served during the summer holidays. In 2003 approximately 300 children participated in the Boitumelo program.

The Boitumelo Mo Nageng camps combine wildlife conservation, environmental awareness, therapeutic recreation, health education, and psycho-social support in an atmosphere of fun. Plans for the future of the program include developing a strong and consistent outreach program that will connect participants of the Boitumelo program to local resources and their peers, to empower campers to get involved in their communities, and to create additional opportunities for campers to feel successful.

Bana Ba Naga (Children in the Wilderness) - Botswana

Since 2001 Okavango Wilderness Safaris has closed five of its lodges to paying guests and hosted more than 500 orphans and vulnerable children. Here, the children's camps focus heavily on conservation, environmental education, and health education under the direction of an increasingly confident local staff.

Based on the success of the first children's camp program, Wilderness Safaris has formed Children in the Wilderness (CITW) as the non-profit arm of its safari lodge business in order to continue to address the growing needs of orphans and vulnerable children in Southern Africa.

Bambanani (Going Forward Together) - South Africa

Hosted by the Valley Trust, a community development center located in the Valley of a Thousand Hills outside Durban, South Africa, Camp Bambanani served 155 children in its 2003 pilot season. The children, ranging in age from 7 to 18, were selected from four different local orphan care programs in the greater Durban area.

A part of each session's program was hosted by the Spirit of Adventure on the Shongweni Dam, an outdoor education facility where the participants were given the opportunity to develop their team building, personal development, and leadership skills under the guidance and supervision of trained facilitators.

Children in the Wilderness - Namibia

The CITW program in Namibia was launched in 2002 with a program that served approximately 90 local youth from orphanages in and around Windhoek. During the 2003 camp season, Kulala Tented Camp and Rhino Camp located near the Sossuvlei dunes hosted a total of 120 children during the CITW program. It was staffed by a number of guides from Wilderness Safaris/Namibia, Peace Corps volunteers, teachers, chaperones, and one Hole in the Wall Camps volunteer mentor.

Ana M Chipululu (Children in the Wilderness) - Malawi

Ana M Chipululu (Children in the Wilderness) hosted 120 Malawian children in its second year, over the course of six sessions. At two different safari sites, Mvuu Lodge located in Liwonde National Park and Chinteche Lodge along Lake Malawi, children from nearby orphanages experienced the inside of a nature reserve to which they are typically denied access. The Ana M Chipululu program included community conservation initiatives such as tree planting.

Children in the Wilderness/Ndumo - South Africa

The CITW program at Ndumo Wilderness Camp, four hours north of Durban on the Ndumo Game Reserve, stands as an example of the potential that such programs have with the initiative of organized and dedicated staff. With little preparation time, a handful of sponsorships and a collection of enthusiastic adults, the Ndumo CITW program came to life with almost no outside assistance and hosted 50 children from local schools over two sessions. Among the fieldtrips enjoyed by the campers were excursions to Sodwana Bay to enjoy the sand and surf, a conservation talk from Kwa Zulu Natal Wildlife department, and an educational trip to a nearby elephant park.

Children in the Wilderness/Mkambati - South Africa

Children in the Wilderness Mkambati will be the first permanent Hole in the Wall Camp facility in Africa, the CITW Mkambati organization was formally founded in January 2004. Wilderness Safaris and the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps have formed a unique partnership to address the needs of South African children with serious illnesses, as well as orphans and vulnerable children in the Eastern Cape. In the same fashion as all Hole in the Wall Camps, CITW/Mkambati will include a medical facility that will allow the program to serve children with various illnesses. The facility will also serve as the CITW flagship and will offer year round programming for families and health care providers and offer training opportunities for other CITW program staff.

The proposed 60-bed camp will be located within Mkambati, a 45,000 acre nature reserve in the Pondoland Region of the Eastern Cape Province. It is a spectacular site of open plains and gorges running to the Indian Ocean's "Wild Coast." Developments of this facility are in their early stages, and currently include a needs assessment of the region and building plans to convert an existing structure into a sophisticated camp facility.

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