Meet the Board
Meet the Board
MARA CONSERVATION
encouraging empathy for other life
MLP Team in Morocco
Advisors in Morocco
Our Mission
We partner with rural, under-resourced communities to expand educational opportunities for youth, empower women through sustainable locally led enterprises, and support environmental stewardship for all, building lasting change from within.
Maasai Mara, Kenya
The indigenous community of the Maasai Mara has co-existed with wildlife for millennia. Their pastoral way of life preserves native grasslands, a vital carbon sink, while allowing space for wildlife that has disappeared in so many other places. The Maasai are guardians of these treasures. And yet, life is hard for people who live here, with disadvantages in education, health, and basic livelihoods. Although there are over 150 safari camps iin the greater Mara region, little of that economy benefits families.
According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 75% of people in the Mara experience multi-dimensional poverty and survive on less than $1 a day. Fewer than 30% of women had the opportunity for formal schooling, limiting their ability to support their families. Only around 10% of youth attend high school today, for reasons including school fees and no access to sanitary supplies for girls.
At the same time, this community has a vibrant and ancient culture they're proud of, and it's deeply connected to their land and its biodiversity. Our goal is to honor their way of life while strengthening opportunities within it. We believe that by improving education, family health, and livelihoods, people can thrive, while maintaining what they value most about their culture.
Amazigh Communities of Morocco
We founded Morocco Library Project (MLP) in 2014, and that was the beginning of Oliveseed. This is the 1st English library program in Morocco. From the start, our mission has been to ignite literacy and love of learning in underserved Amazigh (indigenous) communities in the south of Morocco, in collaboration with motivated local teachers and youth (and several times with the Peace Corps). The schools had little in the way of literacy resources like libraries. The MLP libraries are mostly for English classes tailored to each group, and they continue to help teachers with extra-curricular activities for rural students eager to master a global language and expand their perspective of the world through access to a rich variety of resources.
Today, after 12 years of helping teachers inspire a generation of learners, MLP is still a program of Oliveseed and has evolved to the 1st nationwide Short Story Competition for Moroccan youth and indigenous story projects, with published books.
Our goal is for young Moroccans to have the literacy, confidence, and opportunities to become positive hopeful citizens in our changing world. As well as supporting literacy, we are building a bridge of friendship between the U.S. and North Africa.