SORALO was established in 2004 as a community-based and community-driven land trust, to unite the 21 local Maasai communities in the South Rift, who live with their livestock alongside wildlife, forests, and grasslands, to maintain a landscape of exceptional biological and cultural diversity.
SORALO is located in Kenya’s South Rift Valley, a rangeland located between the Maasai Mara and Amboseli. The rangeland hosts one of the richest large mammal populations on earth; where wildlife and pastoralist communities have co-existed for generations, due to the communal and semi-nomadic form of local land use, which encourages mobility to ensure survival.
As well as SORALO’s commitment to the preservation of the land, it is equally committed to the wellbeing of those who live on the land, understanding the need for harmonious co-existence of wildlife and people and believing that the health of the people is central to creating this balance.
CHASE Africa identified SORALO as an organisation that was ideally placed to integrate a community health project within its conservation programme. This is due to its strong relationships with local communities and because it works in an area where people have very poor access to health services as well as heavy reliance upon the local natural environment for their livelihoods, food, firewood for fuel and water and lack resilience to environmental shocks such as drought.
In 2021, CHASE Africa supported SORALO to launch their first community health programme. Working in partnership with Kajiado Ministry of Health, the programme has improved knowledge and attitudes towards health (particularly Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights) and increased access to quality basic health services.
The programme has trained Community Health Workers on basic healthcare and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and reaches thousands of community members with information on healthcare and SRHR through community dialogues and household visits. Health services are provided through outreach clinics and Backpack Nurse clinics to make health services more accessible to remote communities.
Given the remote nature of these communities, many of the children arriving at the medical outreaches were receiving their first ever childhood immunisations and were being treated for malnutrition. We are now seeing women coming to deliver their babies safely in clinics rather than in their villages and choosing to plan and space their pregnancies.
As a result community members are better equipped to improve the health of themselves and their families, leading ultimately to a healthier environment.