Current Projects

Wilderness Leadership School

Ian Player Wild Academy

  • Education and community upliftment is the key to a long-term sustainable solution for environmental issues. Social upliftment is the base requirement of Bee and will complement initiates ‘on the ground’ e.g., bee conservancies, snare hunting, re-forestation, etc. Each of these will impact the communities and establish further sustainability.

Programs in Place

  • Wilderness Ranger Training
  • BEE keeping sanctuary Training
  • Anti Poaching Snare Removal Ranger Training

Impact

  • Improving learning as a mechanism to alleviate poverty, entrepreneurial, job creation and community development.
  • Awareness, behavioral change and participation with environmental best practice
  • Generic improvement on results affecting school pass marks to University exemptions and pass marks
  • Access to learnerships, scholarships etc.
  • Improved entrepreneurial activity
  • Direct supplier and procurement activity
  • Project specific employment e.g snares, bees
  • Generic employment e.g contributor recruitment
  • Capacity change e.g teacher development
  • Structural change e.g libraries, access to internet, apps e.g math’s
  • Direct economic benefit to the community e.g sale of honey

Financial Goal

  • Wilderness Qualified Ranger – R250k per person
  • Qualified Ranger – R70k per person
  • Imvelo Ranger (focusing on the empowerment of woman) to confirm how much per person
  • Wilderness Trail – 12k per person for 5days for a group of 8 people

The Snare Removal Programme

Anti- Poaching Snare Removal Programme

Snare hunting, or snaring, has a devasting effect on the environment and is an incredibly cruel mechanism of poaching.

Due to several factors including an increase in populations (especially in areas close to national parks), unemployment and low economic growth and that rhino poaching is becoming less economically viable due to decreasing numbers and more effective rhino protection, the prevalence of snaring is exponentially increasing.

They are multiple facets to snaring, key being who are parties setting the snares. Firstly, there are subsistence poachers who are hunting to feed their families, secondly, there are commercial poachers who are selling ‘bush-meat’ and thirdly there are poachers who are snaring for ‘muti’. These people are generally hunting for predators and will often use dogs and other domestic animals as bait. Although not directly related to snaring, poachers will also use poison and other methods to catch other animals and birds such as vultures that also have commercial value and will harvest plants that are used as medicine.

The impact of the snaring program will be leveraged through collaborating with existing snaring projects that are already in place. Not only do these organizations have existing experience and infrastructure, but they also have local knowledge including relationships with communities surrounding the parks. Depending on how these organizations are set up, multiple options are available to enhance snaring success including the setting up and/or growing of dedicated teams, part-time teams, subsidized teams and/or volunteer teams.

A key aspect to the success of the snaring initiative is not only the removal of snares and the capturing of poachers, but also initiatives that are aimed at solving the problem at its source. These initiatives include job creation programs that include the hiring of rangers and support team members, training of rangers, and socio-environmental awareness programs.

Anti-snaring teams will not only work to prevent snaring but will also combat other poaching activity. 

The project aims to absorb people that are already qualified as rangers, and to leverage the capacity of existing teams that are already on the ground, thereby not only meeting several key objectives, but also reducing the lead time to having people on the ground. In parallel to this, working with existing education providers who can drive learning and awareness programs.

The immediate strategy is to ingrate support rangers into existing teams. This not only bolsters existing teams, sustainability, and capacity, but fast tracks the new rangers’ practical experience and on the ground training.  The estimated cost per ranger

Financial Goals

This is mostly a volunteer program and highly dangerous, the cost to convert the challenges of a volunteer’s time into a fulltime employment is significant, each team needs to be fully mobilized with the various elements.  Such a team will need – vehicles, weaponry, official uniforms and communication equipment to properly coordinate and ranger training.  Our goal is to set up 100 teams up per annum at a cost of R70k per ranger.

The Bee Charity

The Village Market Africa is a Social Enterprise, that was founded out of a need to address the global plight of dying bees and food insecurity, to bridge the gap of the current global shortage of good quality honey and enable social economic development in deep remote African villages.  We envision a new positive reality of African communities with quality standards of sustainable living in harmony with the environment.  Our goals are to:

  • Address and improve the declining bee population through creating spaces that allow them to thrive in a form of deep remote villages in Africa.
  • Training community members in sustainable beekeeping and nature conservation and buying back the produce to ensure improved livelihoods.
  • Restoration of forests and natural spaces
  • Promote sustainable practices

Our impact Community Initiatives

  • Bee Kids – Rural Winterveldt
  • Sikelelani Coop – Bee Fence – Human Elephant Conflict
  • Ikemiseng for the Visually Impaired – Ga-Rankuwa
  • Mashemong Youth – Dendron Limpopo
  • Tuane Village – Bilene – Mozambique
  • Better Bees – Chegutu – Zimbabwe
  • Dinokeng Game Reserve youth – Hammanskraal
  • Vhembe 3 Communities: Tshikundamalema, Mutele and Masisi
  • Madikwe Beekeepers

The Bee Conserve

  • This is a first ever Bee Conservation Project in the heart of Morningside Sandton. Its main objective is to educate the youth and the public on the importance of Bees. This project needs to be developed to a completed stage to open to the public and schools. – take out to

Financial Goals

  • Full cost of setting up a bee sanctuary for 20 beneficiaries amounts to R502828K (Fix) divided by the 20 beneficiaries = R25141.40.
  • Plus, we can add individual costs to the training cost, which comes to about R5000 per beneficiary. Running costs plus training costs = will be R30141,40 per beneficiary.

Planet Savers - Educating Superheroes

Planet Savers Educating Superheroes

  • The Planet Savers Hero’s on the move is an interactive environmental presentation for school children grade 0 to matric. The Ian Player and Magqubu Ntombela’s friendship is central to the presentation and was written and directed by the renowned Janice Honeyman and Maralin Vanrenen. Van Reenen

  • The presentation aims to show children how their behaviour impacts the environment, how that influences our natural world, and how we can either survive and thrive or destroy and perish because of our choices and behaviours. The clock is ticking, and we need to reach out to as many of the youth as we can through conservation presentations of a carefully crafted performance piece in as many schools as possible throughout South Africa.

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Focusing on the:

  • Growing food, fruit trees, Composting, and food gardens.
  • Recycling re-purposing reusing, i.e., eco bricks, making things out of paper mâché and biogas for sustainable energy.
  • Cleaning up Rivers for clean water. Most Rivers are used for cleaning, ablution and washing facilities. How do we overcome these problems? Domestic Animal awareness.

Planet Savers Hero’s on the Move

  • With kids mostly living in the realm of Marvel comic superheroes and Science Fiction they are drifting further and further from the realities that are responsible for their survival on this Planet Earth, our true home. The Real Heroes are right here and if they can do just one thing to save their home, they are the Real Heroes of stories to be told. Through this Theatre in Education presentation, we intend to inspire the learners to be a Planet Saver Superhero.

Superheroes

  • The brother hood of man as exemplified by Ian and Magqubu lifelong friendship of Mentor and Mentee is key focusing on the relationship between Ian Player and Magqubu Ntombela and the rich Legacy they have left this planet. And hence it will be important for us to share and teach the learners the importance of relationships which resulted in the story of saving the Rhino and wildlife and wilderness areas by Ian Player and Magqubu Ntombela.

Financial Goal

  • 2 500 learners per week = 10 000 learners per month x 9 months = 90 000 children per annum = R2 950 000 divided by 90 000 = R327 per child.