Long-term Vision

Currently Wilderness Safaris closes a number of their safari camps to guests for periods of up to six weeks at a time each year to host children. While these safari camps offer an incredible experience for the children, the demand and success of this programme means that it needs to be expanded

• Geographically (so that children from different parts of each country are capable of being hosted on the programme).   We have successfully completed our first Children in the Wilderness Seychelles programme in 2006 and in time, hope to initiate the programme in Zambia
• To ensure that a greater number of children each year are afforded the privilege of being hosted on the programme.
• To allow children with life threatening  illnesses such as cancer, HIV / Aids to be included in the camp  programmes.
• To improve the follow-up programmes for children who have already attended the Children in the Wilderness camp in the past years. This will ensure that the effectiveness of the programme is continued and enhanced.
• To develop evaluation strategies to effectively monitor and demonstrate the impacts of our programme.
• To provide ongoing training in each country to train suitable, locally based people to become full time councilors and make a career for themselves in children's education. That in turn, will create a greater skills base and a greater leadership pool within the communities which we hope will help to uplift these local communities.

To achieve all this, a number of initiatives and goals have to be maintained and attained:

• Wilderness Safaris needs to keep hosting groups of disadvantaged children in their safari camps for a number of weeks each year.
• To look at the possibility and potential of permanent, purpose-built and dedicated Children in the Wilderness Camp, that is capable of hosting larger numbers of children year round.
• To look at creating mobile/outreach children's programmes in the countries of operation. These mobile programmes can substantially reach many more children and thereby increase the benefits of the
• The Children in the Wilderness programme then needs to be expanded in time throughout all of sub-Saharan Africa and possibly into parts of the world that need environmental and community upliftment.