The community Impact of Lewa Safari Marathon

The Lewa Safari Marathon is one of the world’s most iconic running events, held over two 20.1-kilometer loops of the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy game reserve in Isiolo County.

Since its inception in 2000, Lewa Marathon has continued to raise raised funds for wildlife conservation and community projects around Samburu, Isiolo, Laikipia and Meru areas.

The annual race returns this Saturday and will be a welcome sight for local communities who are the immediate beneficiaries of its conservancy efforts.

Through its education programme, the Lewa Conservancy has built and developed 27 schools which are well equipped and sufficiently staffed.

The Lewa Conservancy Education Programme manager Purity Kinoti told Citizen Digital that through the initiative, they have managed to uplift the lives of more than 10,000 students who went through the system to become important members of the society.

“Our education programme here in Lewa was established in the year 2000 to support the communities’ living around the conservancy to improve their education level because we believe if we support them they will become great motivation and leaders of society as well and become conservational ambassadors.

“We have scholarship programmers whereby we offer full scholarship to students and I’m happy to report that at least in every community we have supported has a good number of graduates. I’m also the beneficiary of the Lewa Education programme.

“We have total number of 27 schools whereby 19 are primary schools and we normally support top boy and girls students in each school (primary level) whereby we offer them full sponsorship,” Kinoti said.

One of the 27 schools which have benefited from the Programme is Laparua Primary school, situated in Isiolo North Constituency, Isiolo County where modern classrooms have been built including the junior secondary in the new curriculum.

The major challenge in the Leparua village is its low network coverage and lack of electricity but the conservancy has managed to install solar systems for power supply.

“I want to thank Lewa for the great initiative which has benefited the live of different community living around. North Eastern part of the country has been seen as areas of low living but through the system the students feels the same as others in Nairobi and other parts of the country.

“Our only major challenge here is communication whereby we have to look for high attitude places where we can access the internet at least to communicate with the conservancy educating progamme as well as the parents,” the acting deputy head of the school, Kelly Gitonga said.

Pauline Lemarito, a parent in the school has also praised the initiative, saying it has come the right time students and parents are suffering.

“We have been suffering a lot for many year but since the introduction this initiative, we parents now we can smile because we know where to take our children who will learn under modern facilities. Despite the internet challenge we are facing, at least parents can get the reports of how their students are performing by visiting the schools or teachers sent the reports through the students.

Since its inception in 2000 the Lewa marathon has raised over $8 million dollars in support of conservation and community initiatives throughout Kenya. Nearly $4 million dollars have been invested in the direct protection of endangered species, other wildlife and their habitats.