Kenya Team Leap

Your time will be split between our tented camps at the Indian Ocean coast, in the beautiful Shimba Hills and in the African bush close to Tsavo National Park. Between them you’ll get stuck into a series of sustainable conservation and community projects making a considerable difference to the communities and their environments. Bush- Mwaluganje Elephant Sanctuary The adventure starts in the Shimba Hills (45mins from the beach), where we are extremely lucky to have a mobile camp in a beautiful sanctuary with a 360-degree view over the herds of elephant. It has the densest population of elephants per square mile for anywhere worldwide. The Sanctuary is community owned and here you'll play an instrumental role in developing initiatives aimed at reducing the human-wildlife conflict. This will include helping rangers with conservation and elephant identification, planting trees, helping to repair roads, educating local people and even working with them to make paper out of elephant dung! Coast - Diani Beach Here you will be living in a traditional village a short distance from Diani Beach on the South Kenya Coast, famous for its shallow, warm, reef protected water and tropical beaches. A variety of restaurants, water sport centers, internet, shopping and other facilities are close by. 10 minutes away is Ukunda town, home to the indigenous Digo people providing local culture and colourful market stalls. You will be teaching children English and Sport at Makongeni School, helping to construct classrooms, improving access to clean drinking water and even planting trees with primary school kids to teach about forest conservation. You'll also have the chance to wotk with orphans and assist a local grass-roots charity which provides valuable support to the community in a number of ways: medical, ‘a bed for a child’, improving infrastructure – classrooms, medical centre, ablution (sanitation) blocks and empowering women’s groups with income generating schemes. Rukinga Ranch - Tsavo In the third placement you will experience real life on safari at Rukinga Ranch, a tented camp about 4 hours from the coast, bordering Tsavo National Parks. It is a permanent bush camp in the centre of Rukinga Sanctuary, set out like an African village, surrounded by endless views of the African Bush. There is one large mess area as well as a large campfire area where you can relax after a hard day's work. Here you will be helping with a mix of conservation and community projects including work at the local school, building infrastructure and working alongside Kenyan wildlife rangers to survey and protect animals. Projects are sustainable giving long-term benefits to both the community and environment.