By Kim McCoy | Executive Director
We are very grateful for your support and we are pleased to inform you that the third biennial Maasai Olympics will be held on December 10th, 2016 in Kenya. Preparations are actively being made for this event and sponsors are being sought. We are hopeful that the global media especially in the year of the Rio Olympics will again highlight this unique partnship to save lions.
The longterm goal of this event (last held in December 2014) is ongoing engagement with the warriors, the Menye Layiok (or ‘cultural fathers’) and the general Maasai community. This ensures that the conservation education provided during the Maasai Olympics is continually reinforced, and that the passion and zeal generated during and immediately following the sports competitions do not die out.
Accordingly, at the end of 2015 a meeting was held with the Menye Layiok in which they requested more frequent meetings with the warriors. Samuel Kaanki, the Moran Education Initiative (MEI) Coordinator then held meetings in each of the four manyattas (warrior villages) with the goal of strengthening the bond and importance of wildlife conservation with the warriors, the Menye Layiok and the community.
Through the MEI programme, a group of warriors from Mbirikani Group Ranch, the majority of whom are strong participants in the Maasai Olympics, were given soccer uniforms and balls by Big Life and encouraged in soccer practice and facilitated in attending soccer competitions. The winner of the 2014 Maasai Olympics 800m event was facilitated by the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust to travel to New York and run in the New York marathon that happened in November 2015.
A survey to assess the impact of the Maasai Olympics on local warriors was conducted across the four participating group ranches in October and November 2015. One hundred and sixteen warriors were interviewed. The Maasai Olympics is focused on lion conservation, and preventing warriors from engaging in lion hunts, and so a number of questions were focused on lion conservation and attitudes and behaviour towards lions. The remaining questions were specific to the event itself, including attitudes towards the event and an understanding of purpose behind the event.
Among other results, the survey found that 91% of the warriors believed that it is important to protect lions, and of those, 65% mentioned Maasai Olympics as a reason for their attitude. Of the warriors that knew about Maasai Olympics, 87% stated that the Maasai Olympics had made them less interested in killing a lion, 91% said that Maasai Olympics had made them more willing to support lion conservation, and 93% said that they believed that Maasai Olympics had raised awareness about lion conservation in their community. Respondents were also asked how they viewed the Maasai Olympics as a way to compete for status and recognition of manhood, something that would historically have been done though lion hunting. Ninety three percent felt that it was either a good or very good alternative.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
