Since its creation in 2007, Soaring Flamingo utilized local resources to the extent possible. In addition to employing and developing the skills of locally recruited staff, it cooperates with the local community to provide its services (guides, activities, etc.) and obtains its supplies from local suppliers to encourage the development of regional businesses.
Beyond these actions which are part of its DNA, Soaring Flamingo supports various projects related to the protection of the environment or the education of children, in particular through its partnership with the social enterprise Green Venture and with the NGO Children of Amani.
Our partnership with Green Venture
Green Venture is a company which transforms plastic waste into affordable and durable building products.
It started in December 2015, when its founder Edgar Edmund Tarimo at the age of 15 saw how floods destroyed more than 700 mud houses in Dar Es Salaam leaving many people displaced and tons of plastics floating on the flood water. At this point, he thought of making durable and affordable building materials from recycling plastic waste as this could solve both problems.
Green Venture has developed an innovative eco-friendly material which is manufactured from plastic waste: “eco plastic wood”. The products that are made with this material look and feel like wood but have much better quality and longer-lasting durability.
The advantage is twofold:
- Green Venture works with materials that are not biodegradable, which prevents them from sitting in landfills for a long period of time. This helps to protect the environment, in addition to avoiding local authorities’ struggle with the disposal problems of this waste.
- The products are durable, economical and require little or no maintenance. They are even weatherproof, which makes them much more versatile and useful in many different environments.
Green Ventures manufactures building materials and produces furniture. Manufactured building materials are planks which are used to construct floor decking, constructing walls and fences, and housing, helping to reduce deforestation too. The chairs and other furniture produced by Green Ventures are water-resistant and termite resistant and, have a higher tensile strength than normal wood.
Since 2015, Green Venture has been able to recycle over 600 tons of plastic saved 75,000 trees and created up to 130 jobs to waste collectors and 8 full-time jobs. While Green Venture started its operations in Arusha, the problem of plastics and deforestation is far larger. Hence Green Ventures is looking to form partnerships and expand beyond its current capacity.
For more information, visit Green Venture website
We offer our customers who wish to offset their carbon emissions related to air travel to Tanzania to calculate their carbon footprint and offset it by donating to Green Venture (terms to be defined later). We suggest payment of TZS 10,000 (approximately USD 4.50) per ton of CO2. Any donation made will be matched by Soaring Flamingo, which will pay an equivalent amount to Green Venture, thus supporting a dual environmental and social objective.
Example: for a traveler on a return flight from Paris to Kilimanjaro, the distance traveled is 13,375 km, corresponding to 2.41 tons of CO2 emitted. If desired, the traveler can donate approximately USD 10 to Green Venture, which will ultimately receive USD 20.
Calculate donation to Green Venture
Our partnership with Amani Childrens’ Home
Amani Children’s Home is a residential children’s home and community center working with Tanzanian Social Welfare to provide a haven for children in crisis, for example, from families disrupted by alcohol problems. (Amani Children’s Home is not an orphanage.)
Amani Children’s Home offers children:
- Safe shelter: welcoming facilities, a well-maintained campus, and a space within the dormitories for each child.
- Educational equity: Amani provides scholarships to local schools. This cradle-to-graduation program ensures that children have the right to learn through all 15 years of schooling – while they are living at Amani Children’s Home or not.
- Hygiene and sanitation: safe drinking water, proper restroom facilities, and public health programs.
- Emotional wellbeing: Amani provides social welfare counseling to all families within its program. It supports healthy relationships with relatives, protects children’s rights, and provides age-appropriate therapy. It supports access to cultural and religious programs based on the child’s faith and preferences.
- Health and wellness: Amani provides access to quality medical care and athletic programs.
- Food security thanks to balanced diets: On-site and off-site gardens and livestock provide fresh produce and protein for the children. Both also serve as educational opportunities in agriculture and animal husbandry.
For more information, visit Amani Childrens’ Home website and upload the latest annual report
We offer our customers to include a visit to Amani Children’s Home in their day in Mto wa Mbu. To be able to spend time with the children, we suggest scheduling this visit around 4:30 p.m., after school. For our most motivated travelers, it is possible to plan a half-day or a full day of activities at Amani Children’s home or even spend the night (in basic accommodation) there. Of course, it is also possible to donate to this organization.
We are also in the process of setting up a plastic collection system with Amani Children’s Home under which our vehicles transport plastic waste collected in Mto wa Mbu to Green Venture for recycling when we return from our safaris to Arusha.
