Our Vision

To inspire every person we train and engage with to conserve our natural world

Our Mission

To equip people with the necessary knowledge, leadership and applied skills to conserve and protect Africa’s natural resources and biodiversity in viable, inclusive and economically successful ways.

The Challenge

Current challenges within the conservation and environmental sector are multifaceted and interconnected, reflecting the complexity of both ecological systems and human societies. Addressing these challenges requires a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach that integrates training needs, scientific research, policy development, community engagement, and international cooperation.

The Invitation

We invite organisations who are interested in addressing these challenges to partner with us so we can collectively come up with solutions to addressing training and skills development needs in collaboration with other relevant partners.

Our Role and Responsibility

In responding to regional conservation and environmental challenges, and in the context of broader global concerns and social development goals, we believe that the College’s responsibility is to produce conservation change agents who are capable of responding to and managing these challenges.

We believe that the College has an enabling role through educating, training, and developing the skills, knowledge and attitudes of our students and beneficiaries to effect the change.

Our Approach

Our approach to applied holistic skills development for conservation embraces a landscape approach, which is socio-ecological by definition and is underpinned by rights-based approaches that imply integrated, inclusive, holistic principles.  This links the co-existence of humans and nature with the ultimate goal of ensuring ‘nature-positive’ livelihoods.

As an independent non-profit public benefit company, established in 1996 in close cooperation with interested and affected parties, the Southern African Wildlife College delivers education, training and skills development programmes and projects to help conserve the region’s rich biological diversity and ensure that its threatened species are conserved and protected.

However, we are more than an accredited and applied training facility. We are dynamic and responsive to changing needs within the conservation sector and, as such, are an active role-player that strives to enable and implement best practices. As an enabling partner, we support the activities or training needed to extend the SAWC strategy to provide future functionality across the sector.

Why Partner with Us

• We are not just a tick box exercise, we subscribe to responsible resource management (environmental/social/financial aspects considered)
• We firmly embrace a people-centred and rights-based approach to help build a sustainable balance between people and nature by empowering local communities to make decisions that will improve their livelihoods through responsible management of their natural resources.
• We ensure communities have a voice in our conservation endeavours
• We train communities and landowners to improve land management, whilst also addressing food security
• We surround ourselves with partners and stakeholders who have similar conservation ethics
• We work with industry to ensure applied conservation research
• We test new ideas and technologies to improve conservation effectiveness
• We bridge the gap between school programmes and future careers in conservation
• We maintain sound relationships with conservation organisations, communities and clients, as well as with all other stakeholders including the donor community

Ultimately, we believe in conservation through collaboration.