Sarah Dawn Bergs

Nourish

What does your company do?

Nourish is a nonprofit organisation in South Africa, established to address the disconnect between people and protected areas. Two of the biggest problems facing South Africa are poverty and wildlife crime (poaching) and these are intrinsically linked. A legacy of apartheid has disenfranchised whole communities that live on the borders of the National Parks. These communities ) are some of the most marginalised and poverty stricken in the country where lack of access to water, employment, and basic sanitation is the norm. Poverty not only leads to subsistence poaching but contributes significantly to inclusion/recruitment in criminal poaching syndicates. Nourish NPO was founded in 2011 to address this disconnect between rural wildlife communities and the neighbouring protected areas. It is a platform linking conservation with community - finding integrated sustainable solutions to issues that indirectly impact conservation such as poverty, low levels of education, food insecurity, and unemployment. Located on tribal land in Sigagule Village, Mpumalanga, in the buffer zone of the Kruger National Park, Nourish believes that conservation and wildlife cannot exist apart from the communities and people that live on their boundaries and that the answer to stemming the poaching crisis is through providing economic opportunities for the residents of these impoverished communities. Nourish services the rural villages and communities in the area by implementing its projects through an Eco Village model focused on education, enterprise and tourism to grow resilience in wildlife communities. The journey towards sustainability lies in making tangible impacts in both conservation and community well-being. The Nourish Eco Village is an innovative solution to a complex problem. Our organisational focus is on bottom up, community-led, grassroots initiatives, based on a holistic understanding of Maslow's Pyramid of need; integrating the base (physical) needs of community members, before building to education, enterprise and then actualisation. It is through this systematic empowerment process that we realise our Theory of Change. A person does not require only one thing to enable resilience, or to unlock environmental ambassadorship, but rather requires a cohesive and focused intervention that enables cradle to career life/ livelihood improvements. This is the goal and vision of the Eco Village program.