Hands Off Our Elephants

Mainstream media coverage was just one of the ways in which she generated attention to the cause. The campaign got documentaries and other films on African wildlife to be shown for the first time for free in Africa. This was an innovative method as these films are usually created for a Western audience and hadn’t been seen by the people who inhabit these environments. In addition to these films, the team went into the field and documented their own stories of local people. Approximately 5 million Kenyans watched these local productions, resulting in an overwhelming 40,000 offering to volunteer in two years. Numbers like these show the importance of education in conservation; mostly people are unaware, and fixing these problems at their root can cause serious change, and once awareness is created, the Snowball Effect occurs whereby change occurs. This is only enforced by having important figureheads leading by example in their support, i.e the First Lady, providing legitimacy to the cause.

The campaign also united forces, ensuring a consensus in beliefs to ensure a collective comprehensive system that created an extreme reduction in poaching and the ability to move ivory in the market. This meant regulation in different areas from seaports to airports.