WE BELIEVE THAT THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT OUR PLANET’S REMAINING WILDERNESS IS TO INVEST IN THE COMMUNITIES WHO LIVE THERE
OUR WORK
A&K founder Geoffrey Kent pioneered the community-first approach to conservation more than 60 years ago when he launched the world’s first modern luxury safari.
His trailblazing ethos, “Shoot with a camera, not with a gun,” changed the way people travelled in Africa. Up until that moment it was about trophy-hunting; suddenly, the real prize of a safari was seeing these beautiful, spectacular creatures up close in their natural habitat.
Today, we still believe that the best way to protect our planet’s remaining wilderness is to invest in the communities who live there. Fostering a sense of appreciation and value of the natural world is the cornerstone of our approach to conservation of wildlife and wilderness — and this starts with people.
In alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goals, our projects focus on education, enterprise, health and environment. Through these initiatives, we aim to support, empower and educate local communities to facilitate the protection of their surroundings, and to ensure that the people in the places where we travel also benefit directly from tourism.
The A&K Philanthropy nonprofit network now spans 24 countries on all seven continents, positively impacting hundreds of thousands of lives and helping preserve some of the world’s most precious ecosystems as we continue to celebrate travel as a force for good.
SUPPORT IN 2023
FUNDING SUMMARY
All guest donations go directly toward funding AKP projects. Thanks to your generosity, we are able to power critical, community-focused programs that improve the health, education and economic opportunities of the people who live in the places where we travel, and promote the conservation of the surrounding wilderness. And through our partnerships, the value of every dollar donated is leveraged to achieve an exponentially greater impact.
OUR HISTORY:
PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE
Travel has the potential to enrich, but it can also threaten the fabric and spirit of fragile destinations. The A&K Travel Group firmly believes that it is our responsibility to protect the natural and cultural heritage that makes travel worthwhile. For more than 40 years, our team has been deeply involved in both the wellbeing of our community partners and the conservation of natural habitats.
Jorie Butler Kent and Geoffrey Kent establish the Abercrombie & Kent Foundation. This is a pioneering move in the travel sector and led to many companies following suit with their own corporate charities. They also launch Friends of Conservation (FOC) to play a role in preservation efforts in the Maasai Mara in Kenya, one of the most biologically diverse and ecologically important regions of the world.
With the approach of the new millennium, and in response to the global need for conservation of our natural and cultural resources, A&K further expands its support to projects on all seven continents with the launch of the Abercrombie & Kent Global Foundation (AKGF). This new entity incorporates the original foundation and supports projects ranging from training ecologists in Zimbabwe’s national parks to supporting oryx breeding in Jordan and funding community centers in Brazil.
A&K builds on its commitment to conservation with the launch of the Climate Change Challenge, an effort to educate the public about the threat posed by global warming and assist efforts to support research to monitor temperature change in fragile environments. With funds raised through the Climate Change Challenge, FOC supports efforts in India to reforest critical wildlife corridors, sequester carbon and aid communities experiencing human-wildlife conflict. Pioneering climate-change expert and scientist Dr. James McClintock joins his first Antarctica cruise with A&K as a keynote speaker as part of our Antarctica Climate Change Program.
The A&K Global Foundation is re-branded as Abercrombie & Kent Philanthropy (AKP) and re-registered as a 501(c)3 U.S. nonprofit. The process of separating from FOC is also initiated.
Education is one of our fundamental pillars, yet we know that pupils can’t learn without access to nourishing meals. Our school meal program began at Nakatindi Primary School in Zambia and has since expanded to multiple countries, ensuring that over 6,000 students are now happier, healthier and achieving academic success.
A&K hires an Executive Director to run AKP to deepen the level of impact. AKP Coordinators start to be employed on a wide scale, and guest begin visiting to see our work firsthand.
Our partnership with Cambodian NGO Trailblazer begins, and together we undertake the construction of 45 wells to bring clean water to families living in rural communities in Cambodia, to improve health and hygiene, and to irrigate their much-needed vegetable gardens.
Our bike shop programs are based on the premise that entrepreneurship is key to providing women with opportunities to lift themselves and their families out of poverty and create long-term stability and security through income generation. In 2016, we fund the first two containers of bicycles (around 900 bikes in total, with an in-kind value of around US$90,000) to Nakatindi in Zambia. It was such a success the bike shop project now operates in Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Jordan and Egypt.
We begin a partnership with LifeStraw and launch our Safe Water for Schools program, delivering water filters to schools in the Maasai Mara and giving access to clean water to approximately 27,000 schoolchildren. The program has since expanded to every school that borders the Ngorongoro Crater and Amboseli National Park, and as of early 2024, every school that borders Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and the Ol Pejeta Reserve in Kenya.
We partner with U.S.-based nonprofit Project C.U.R.E., the world’s largest distributor of donated medical supplies, equipment and services to healthcare professionals in more than 135 countries. Our first container brings medical equipment and supplies worth US$400,000 to the Nakatindi Clinic in Zambia, vastly improving the healthcare provision for people living in the area.
We focus on projects to radically improve access to basic healthcare needs in local communities, including facilitating the supply of medical supplies in Zambia and funding nursing training and the expansion of the Bwindi Waiting Mother’s Hostel in Uganda, creating a valuable community asset for pregnant women and leading to the healthy births of 455 babies in Nakatindi Village.
Female entrepreneurship is known to improve life and autonomy for women, their families and the wider community. Our beadmaking projects in Africa tap into the cultural significance of jewelry making, while creating training and then jobs from jewelry sales. The first bead project launches in Nakatindi in Zambia and quickly expands to successful women-led businesses in Tanzania and Uganda.
Many of our community partners are hit hard by COVID-19. Although trading and many educational settings are not operational, we continue our support in multiple ways — for example, by funding food distribution in the slums of Udaipur and the favelas of Rio, and delivering beds and medical equipment to hospitals in Tanzania and Uganda.
We now have 17 coordinators and more than 50 projects in 17 countries with annual donations totaling $1.9 million, with each dollar donated equating to multiple dollars of value. Future plans include an empowerment center in Tanzania and a development center in Botswana.
