Multiple ripple effects – from just 1 bottle of milk!
Every bottle of milk Reteti receives provides the elephant orphans with superior nutrition – AND helps Namunyak’s indigenous community, wilderness, and other wildlife to thrive!
The Chairlady of Milk Mamas visit Reteti and admire the size of the elephants’ milk bottle. Photo: Simon Pocock
Donations to the Milk to Market program are about so much more than feeding elephant orphans! Your support also nurtures a brighter future for:
the Samburu people
Northern Kenya’s unique animal kingdom,
the vast and breathtaking wilderness they call home!
The Samburu and Namunyak’s free-roaming elephants have shared this landscape and its natural resources for generations, and the Milk to Market program highlights this beautiful human-wildlife relationship.
Apart from providing the calves with nutritious nourishment, the program ensures meaningful employment for Reteti’s Samburu keepers, and opens the doors of employment to Samburu women – who’ve never had economic opportunities. Selling their excess goat milk to Reteti is allowing them to start their own businesses, save money, support their families, and pay for their children’s healthcare needs and school fees!
Milk Mamas selling their fresh goat milk to the Eco Rangers. Photo: Simon Pocock.
Grounded in a grassroots conservation movement that benefits both people and nature, the sanctuary’s ecotourism model also drives far-reaching rangeland management initiatives – which is seeing Namunyak’s landscape being restored and transformed.
It’s such a privilege to be part of this story that provides a lifeline to both the local elephant population as well as those who live among them. You too can join this inspiring journey! The simple act of giving is not just about charity but about supporting interdependence, understanding, and the harmonious co-existence of all life forms.
With every bottle of goat milk gifted:
Reteti’s elephant orphans receive optimal nourishment
the Samburu women supplying goat milk to the sanctuary earn incomes for the first time
the Milk Mamas receive training from The Sarara Foundation in animal husbandry, rangeland management, grazing practices, and more – which enables them to take better care of their livestock to increase milk production and avoid overgrazing
the Milk Mamas are enabled to pay for their children’s education, save for the future, and support both their families and the broader community!
Reteti can keep rescuing, rehabilitating, and releasing orphaned baby elephants back into the wild
the sanctuary can continue providing meaningful employment to the Samburu community – and as the first community-owned and -run sanctuary of its kind on the continent, and the first to employ female keepers, remain a pioneering beacon of light in local ecotourism!
the Samburu community and its prospects for the future are strengthened, while healing and rejuvenating this landscape – the very landscape to which the elephant orphans will ultimately return when they’re released back into the wild!
Milk Mamas from Lowai Obo manyatta receive training on rangeland management by the Eco Rangers. Photo: Simon Pocock
Follow the daily milk journey from our Milk Mamas to Reteti – and take a look at the greater impact of each milk bottle donation here.
One of the best things about gifting a milk bottle at Reteti is that it’s about so much more than just feeding elephant orphans – and also benefits the Milk Mamas who supply the milk, rangeland restoration programs throughout the orphans’ natural habitat, and meaningful ecotourism that supports the community the elephants share this land with!
And thanks to our Milk Match Campaign, your milk bottle donation will make double the impact – which means an even brighter future for Reteti’s orphans, more economic growth, and a landscape that can truly flourish and thrive!
