Meet the Board
Meet the Board
MARA CONSERVATION
encouraging empathy for other life
MLP Team in Morocco
Advisors in Morocco
Our Mission
We believe that when youth and women thrive, communities flourish. Our mission is to advance education, economic empowerment, and local leadership to create lasting change.
Where We Work
Maasai Mara, Kenya
The Maasai Mara is an extraordinary place, where this indigenous community 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 the people who live here, with profound 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, over 75% of people in the Mara experience multi-dimensional poverty and survive on less than $1 a day. Fewer than 30% of women have had formal schooling, limiting their ability to support their families. Only around 10% of youth are attending high school, for reasons including school fees and no access to sanitary supplies for girls.
At the same time, the people in the Mara have a rich and ancient culture they are proud of, and it is deeply connected to their land and its biodiversity. Our mission is to honor their way of life while strengthening opportunities within it. We believe that by improving education, family health, and livelihoods, people here can thrive, while maintaining what they value most about their culture.
Southern Morocco
We founded Morocco Library Project (MLP) in 2014, and that was the beginning of Oliveseed. This is the first English library program in Morocco. From the start, our goal has been to ignite literacy and love of learning in the most under-resourced Amazigh (indigenous) communities in the south of Morocco, in collaboration with highly motivated teachers and youth (and several times with the Peace Corps). The schools had little in the way of learning resources, much less libraries. The MLP libraries are mostly for English classes tailored to that 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 continuing goal is for young rural 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.