International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF)

I would like to request your assistance in covering the expenses of IAPF’s existing Akashinga Program in the Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe – which means salaries, healthcare, training/education, uniforms and boots, patrol equipment, fuel and maintenance for vehicles, vegan food (“fuel for rangers”), communications gear, and myriad other ongoing expenses. The primary beneficiaries will be women in the Zambezi Valley Ecosystem area of Zimbabwe who make up the majority of IAPF’s conservation workforce.

IAPF invests the majority of our management and operational costs directly into the local community at household level. The strategy for success is to empower and develop women through local employment. Women become the best and most effective method of building community support and development. Conservation becomes a bi-product of women and community development.

The project is locally driven, retaining maximum available benefits and management responsibility to motivate conservation. Akashinga is an investment into women and their families, the development of rural communities, and neighboring wilderness areas. By empowering rural women, the program locally motivates poverty reduction, healthcare, skills development, children staying in school, rape & sexual assault prevention, increased life expectancy, disease reduction, and structured family planning.

I am the creator of IAPF, and was an Australian Naval Clearance Diver, Special Operations Sniper, and Iraq War veteran. I project-managed the Iraq Special Police Training Academy in northern Baghdad preparing Iraq’s paramilitary forces for combat. In 2009, I established IAPF, and am deeply involved in all activities. I reside in Zimbabwe with my family and have made the protection of nature my life’s passion…and IAPF my vehicle for action.

In August 2017, I set out to recruit and train the first all-female, armed anti-poaching unit in the world in an abandoned trophy hunting reserve in Zimbabwe. Making 191 arrests in the first 2.5 years of operations, Akashinga helped drive an 80% downturn in elephant poaching in Zimbabwe’s Lower Zambezi Valley.

I am the winner of the 2019 Winsome Constance Kindness Gold Medal, a prestigious international recognition for services to animals and humanity. Past recipients include Sir David Attenborough and Dr. Jane Goodall. My work has been featured in National Geographic, 60 Minutes, Animal Planet, Voice of America, and Forbes. Also, I am prominently featured in the James Cameron documentary The Game Changers and recently released another documentary with James Cameron and National Geographic called Akashinga ‘The Brave Ones’. 

There is a great reliance on wildlife and biodiversity as coping mechanisms to the economic collapse in Zimbabwe. Increased threats and pressure on wildlife and biodiversity resources have been evident through increased illegal activities (wildlife, forest crimes including veld fires caused by poachers) and the subsequent wildlife and biodiversity depletion as communities seek to earn a living.

IAPF protects endangered wildlife and ecosystems by conducting anti-poaching operations, delivering ranger training, supplying equipment and technological solutions, and providing critical project management and administrative support to local communities engaged in preventing poaching and illegal parts trafficking.

Our primary operational model is Akashinga (meaning 'The Brave Ones' in local Shona dialect), a community-driven conservation program, empowering disadvantaged women to restore and manage a network of wilderness areas as an alternative economic model to trophy hunting.

From an economic and community development perspective, the Akashinga model injects 62% of operational costs directly back into local communities – turning biodiversity conservation into a community project. 80% of this reaches the community at household level and puts the equivalent amount of money into the community every 34 days as what trophy hunting had done per annum previously. 

IAPF employs a wholly unique approach to conservation, one rooted in the conviction that wilderness areas and biodiversity need to be cared for and set in line with the practices of the very communities they hope to serve.

Akashinga, the protected area management model, is an innovative approach to preserving nature, channeling large portions of conservation budgets into rural community development through the predominate employment and empowerment of women as rangers and scouts. The subsequent result will be harmonious relationships with local communities (hearts and minds), recreating an opportunity to harvest wildlife crime information in Zimbabwe and neighboring countries. 

A growing body of evidence shows that empowering women is the single biggest force for positive change in the world today. A woman with a salary in rural Africa invests up to 3 times more than a male into their family. Akashinga thus employs the most marginalized women from rural communities and trains them to be rangers protecting large biodiversity landscapes. The women are educated for life beyond Akashinga, while establishing their own investment portfolios in their local communities, hence the approach is both innovative and scalable.

Through Akashinga we are proud to help some of this world's most disadvantaged women--true survivors of personal hardship--claim their own inner power. As they do this, their empathy and compassion are forged alongside their ability to physically defend themselves and others. They are uplifted, and they choose to then go out into the field and protect nature.

These women, most of whom never had a job or learned "trade skills" -- are now actively discovering their own inner strengths and abilities as they absorb a wide range of knowledge and protect large biodiversity landscapes.

Further outcomes that are also exciting to us include rangers learning to drive (and gaining independence), going back to school/college, regaining custody of children from abusive former husbands, and even purchasing property! These are all rarities for women in Africa. Local police chiefs have also reported a 60% reduction in domestic violence and rapes, attributing this to Akashinga's patrols and positive influence in communities.

As an added benefit for our female rangers, we are working with Chinhoyi University and other entities to develop training and career paths for the women that will allow them to develop and grow to the extent they wish.