Find us AT:
Wildlife Conservation Network
EXPO WEEKEND 2008
October 4 & 5, 2008
Mission Bay Conference Center
for more details visit www.wildnet.org
Mission
It is the goal of
AFRICA MATTERS to promote wildlife conservation by encouraging the
interaction of artists, teachers and scientists. We directly offer financial
and logistical assistance to individuals and organizations whose work not
only expands scientific knowledge from the field, but also makes that
knowledge available to others, particularly young Africans. We believe that
art and youth have a key role to play in the world of conservation.
Therefore, the organizations and individuals whose work we support all have
a facet of education and have the potential, the imagination and the
willingness to use art as valuable international language in the cause of
conservation.
Our Three Ps
Partners we work with,
Projects we assist, and the
Pathways we use and create, establish
the intersection for these interactions.
Conservation is about the use of resources, and
so Africa Matters first choice for problem
solution, is to use existing resources. Every attempt is made to assure that
solutions are both site-specific and still globally responsible. We believe
there are all sorts of experts, and everyone needs to be heard. Problems are
multi-faceted and so are the solutions.
Some people are experts simply by virtue of
their personal and historical experience and observation. They must speak and they must be heard. Some people are experts simply because they
are innocents, and they must also be heard.
It is the human ability to
IMAGINE that is the seat of all hope and
the children are the biggest resource of imagination in the world. The
pathway from imagination is creativity to express what we imagine. We
label these expressions as ART.
Early in the history of Man and early in the
life of each individual, the most basic reaction to our world has been
expressive: a child hums, repeats a phrase, a series of movements, shouts
in joy or pain; grows a bit and makes a drawing, a painting, a song, a
poem, a dance, a sculpture, a play. In our modern world, technology has
expanded the possibilities for these expressions ALMOST beyond our
imaginings. Africa Matters is here to
encourage all that expression on their path to conservation.
The 21st Century brings ever-harder challenges
to our stewardship of the planet as the normal biological activity of the
planet is no longer in balance with human impact; as the shear weight of
increased human presence and use and abuse of resources tips the scales. We
must take up the challenge of seeking more and better answers if we are to
conserve wildlife, human life and all the systems that support it.
The ability to share all our expressions, be
they artistic or scientific quickly and widely through technology, offers us
ever more ways to meet the challenge. AFRICA
MATTERS hopes to be one place where these three intersect this
ART, this
EDUCATION, this SCIENCE. We
must love the land and her creatures first engage our hearts in this bond.
Then we must study and share what we learn. That sharing must not only be
of information, but must contain the love. Sometimes it is the innocence of
the amateur that sheds the most light.
