THE SOFT FOOT ALLIANCE
An IPEN Case Study
Lush Spring Prize 2017: Intentional Project
Project Summary
The Soft Foot Alliance is a new
Trust dedicated to improving
the lives and landscapes ofpeople living on the boundaryof Hwange National Park andat the same time achievinga sustainable co-existencewith wildlife. SFA serves todesign and implement longterm sustainable solutions that
promote human-wildlife coexistence.
By designing actions
that firstly improve the lives
and the livelihoods of thepeople living with Lion, Hyena,Elephant, Baboon and Honey
Badger and secondly promote
the conservation of the animal,
we aim to achieve co-existence
between the two.

Regenerative co-herding training.

SFA’s Permaculture & Agroecology Education Lessons• Put people first when seeking to achieve conservation outcomes that enablehuman/wildlife co-existence, particularly where people are struggling to survive
through lack of opportunities.
• Build skills that create a wider range of economic opportunities, alongsidedeveloping experience in regenerative grazing techniques.

Guiding Ethics and Principles
SFA uses Permaculture ethics and principles as guidance for the design and implementation of theirproject:• Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share• Focus on long term sustainability• “Co-operate, don’t compete”• Respect for all life
• See solutions inherent in problems• Work with nature not against it!
Competition for scarce resources brings people and animals into conflict situations. By maximising
efficient use of resources we limit that possibility arising, and people’s vulnerability. In each project, wecome at complex conservation problems from the people’s perspective FIRST!
We believe if we are sensitive to the needs of the people that live on the boundary of the protected areaand help make their lives easier, then we can truly look forward to something sustainable.
A conservation outcome is designed into each project. But we take care of the people first because they
are “the coal-face of conservation.”

Thandolwenkosi Tshuma – Sianyanga villager
Through the field trip to permaculture projects around the country “I have beenworking together with people now, meeting different people. I now make rocketstoves to sell, its improving my life and family. I am also working together on agrazing plan for our cattle as well as reducing deforestation.”

Mpiyekhaya Ncube – Ndawonye (Co-Herd) project
coordinator

Thandolwenkosi Tshuma“I am Mpiyekhaya living on the edge of Hwange National Park, doing Holistic
Grazing through the “Ndawonye project”. As we are herding livestock together,
this can give us abundant food and water for people and livestock throughout theyear. Through the Soft Foot Alliance phones which were given to each herder wehave reduced the conflict with wildlife (lions, hyaena and elephant) through bettercommunications.”

Marlene Sabeta, local lodge owner and Soft Foot
Alliance supporter“We wholeheartedly support the change the Soft Foot Alliance trust has brought
to the community around the national park. Their approach is holistic and they
stick to their vision of “earth care, people care, fair share”, through training andempowering community members. The community is now planning and executing
regeneration of grasslands, protecting cattle and wildlife, creating and cooking on
rocket-stoves, recycling wood and glass and giving the participants a better chanceof a livelihood, happiness and survival.”

SFA’s Examples of Good Practise: WHAT Has BeenDoneMpiyekhaya Ncube

The Soft Foot Alliance started by organizing ward-wide holistic participatory
workshops in every village, done in three 10-day phases over a 4 month period,
using experienced facilitators with expertise in holistic management in communal
areas and participatory processes.
• In the first session, each village worked through story-telling, team-work anddrawings to look at what life and the landscape was in the past, what it is now
and what everyone dreams of for the future. Many lessons were learnt andthrough physical demonstrations of the problems and solutions there was areal awakening that regenerating the land is imperative to attain future dreams.
Village-heads took part in the first session and named this journey “Kubusilizya
Antomwe” (Regenerate Together) in Tonga, a local minority language.
• The next sessions created maps of their areas and planned their livestock
grazing to both regenerate the land and protect livestock from predators.

Marlene Sabeta• To conclude the sessions, SFA funded and supported a very positive
stakeholder’s meeting - the first meeting the community hosted for themselves.
Community leaders shared their vision of Kubusilizya Antomwe (RegenerateTogether) with national parks, the forestry commission, conservation
organizations, lodge owners and others, with participatory methods used tocreate space to build collaborative relationships.
• SFA is now supporting and monitoring the 3 villages who have started
implementing the grazing plans through our existing co-herd initiative, which islinked to skills training.
• A very successful step was a competition process to find ‘fire-souls’ which
selected 13 local people to acquire tools and knowledge, start implementing this,and share this with their villages. This group was taken across the country to:• Train in permaculture and water-harvesting methods,
in Chikukwa, a community that have been practicing
permaculture and water-harvesting for more than 20 years;• Visit established home permaculture and ‘water harvester’projects, the PORET (Participatory Organic Research
Extension and Training) project in an area with similar poor
soils, dry conditions and low-rainfall to the trainees’ homearea, and training with farmers who had been applying thewater harvesting knowledge.
The participants all came away inspired and ready to
implement changes and put them into action. On their return,in each area, the group gave feedback on the trip to the
local community, sharing a film, photos and demonstrating
how to construct and use an A-Frame to mark and dig
swales on contour. Tools were bought to start rain-water
harvesting in each area, around homesteads and throughout
the community. People’s minds and actions can be hard tochange but the power of seeing something different with theirown eyes is undeniable. Most people who attended training
and site visits have started implementing things they havelearned such as rain-water harvesting.
Other achievements in 2017/18:• 5 Rocket stove workshops in 5 villages (50 women), witheach participant making their own super-efficient stovefrom locally available clay and manure;• 3 “Wicking worm bed” construction training anddemonstration workshops on how to build extremely water
efficient vegetable beds, requiring only 80 litres of water
once every 3 weeks;• ‘Kulisumpula Beads’: a group of 12 women trained in kiln
construction and how to make beads from recycled glass
bottles from local lodges – the beads, sold as jewellery totourists, create income for these women;• The skills training centre for the herders operates from arented building: carpentry is mainly taught currently;• Co-herd herders were taken to ‘The Africa Centre for
Holistic Management’ (Victoria Falls) to train with herders
there, in exchange for a rocket stove workshop for womenin the villages in that area.

SFA’s Ways of Achieving Good Practise:
HOW It Is DoneMulti-functional bee-keeping: 3 community members
from 3 villages were selected to take part in a beekeeping
workshop - to test bee-hive fences around fields along theboundary with the protected area - in Kenya, bee-hive fences
have stopped 80% of elephants from entering fields. The
co-herders who are doing carpentry training are making hives
to the “barefoot bee-keeper” design, to ensure the health andwell-being of bees. The hives will eventually be used in andaround communal forest areas, to protect trees, bees, thewhole environment and uplift the community through incomegeneration, selling honey and wax products.

Herders learn skills in regenerative herding methods
and carpentry – which is linked to bee keeping - giving
them a range of income generating opportunities.
Multi-functional co-herding: SFA’s challenge was to turnherding into an opportunity to elevate the herder’s status anduse cattle to regenerate the landscape. Starting with a dozen
herders, we gave them uniforms and linked them with thelocal Lion Guardians with cell phones and Whatsapp groups.
By following a Holistic grazing plan, collective herdingin large herds helps regenerate the grasslands instead ofovergrazing them. The cattle are brought back each nightand held in mobile-bomas which serve the dual purpose ofprotecting livestock from predators and fertilizing the fields atthe same time.
By cooperating and sharing the load, herders buy themselves
time off. During these periods SFA offers them opportunities
to learn new skills – including carpentry, how to make glass
beads out of recycled bottles and weaving intricate designs
around glass bottles using old sacks. These skills add “strings
to their bows”, and products and services they can sell toprovide for their families and develop their future. They
mentor their brothers so that when they move on their cattle
will be looked after and their brothers get the skills.
Co-herd has the Ndebele name “Ndawonye” which means“together” and together we are uplifting a community whilst
regenerating landscapes and saving lions in the process.

Permaculture Principles & Design inAction
Permaculture design can be very complex for thecommunities we work with. It is often techniques that aretaught, yet the overall design process is so important tocommunicate and understand in as simple terms as possible.
This is a challenge we are working on through breaking down
the process.
Permaculture Principles in Action: multi-function; multi-supply;
small change for big effects; relative location; observe &interact.

Practical Next Steps
1. Build solid relations with local leaders
and the international communities alike.
2. Present living examples of practicalsolutions.
3. Truly energize and empower thecommunity to move forward in aregenerative way through training.

Lessons from SFA’s Initial
Outputs & Outcomes
The biggest lesson: “The power ofinspiration! Every other form of training
and motivation pale in the face of people
seeing and experiencing something forthemselves. Positive approaches thatallow people to see what is possible!”

Cultural awareness and sensitivity is
The Next Steps are designed to bevitally important for enabling change in
multi-functional, by meeting individual,
community and livestock needs, through difficult situations:• Using participatory methods createsraising skills and developing incomea space that allows those who nevergenerating opportunities, while also
have a voice to be heard.
protecting wildlife.
• Much cultural knowledge is tied to the
Next steps for projects:
protection of the land - an erosion of• Finalizing the best bee hive designs
tradition is leading to degradation ofand setting up fields with hives tothe landscape and the social fabric.
test how well they work as a barrier
against elephants entering fields– linked to skills development andincome-generating opportunities.

• Establishing a village permaculture
market garden in Masikili village,
establishing two water sources, rainwater collection and a borehole.
Next step for linking demonstration,
training and raising income:• On-going demonstrations of waterharvesting and permaculture
techniques.
• Training in industrial sewing
machine skills so that all mobile
livestock bomas are made locally, forprotection from predators, to fertilize
fields and to create more income
generating opportunities throughmaking and repairing tents for local
photographic safari lodges.

• Each village has a different story for most, the present is painful, anddreaming of the future is difficult forsome.

From Inspiration to Action
The Soft Foot Alliance provides strong
lessons about linking educationand skills development to improved
economic opportunities that also provide
beneficial protection of crops andlivestock, as well as protecting wildlife.
What lessons from SFA could help yourproject, community or network in relationto:a) Project development and evolution,and scaling-up benefits in valuable ways
at the local level?
b) Permaculture and agroecology
education and training, skills andenterprise that relates to local needs?

Summary of the Difference
arising from the LushSpring Prize

The Spring Prize support has• Most villages want to use holistic
particularly helped: a) demonstrate themanagement but many forces at playfact that people believe in us and share
can make it challenging to implement.
our vision; b) in terms of the exposure
In many areas where people live withand funding; c) enabling us to organise
wildlife, the people are struggling toand take the inspirational training trips.
survive, the jobs in the wildlife industry
In more detail, it has helped to
are too few and people come from
implement ideas which we had forother areas with more qualifications
some time but that didn’t ‘fit’ intoand experience - these communities
a lot of standard ‘conservation’ orneed more opportunities. Creating‘development’ funding opportunities.
regenerative activities and income
As a permaculture-based funding
streams are imperative for the wellopportunity, it gave us the freedom
being of all.
to work towards a community wide
dream of regenerating the landscapefor people, wildlife and livestock, andtackling human/wildlife conflict.

Legal Status, Structure & Size
Soft Foot Alliance was started in 2017 and as a very young project, is a very small but growing non-profit community
organisation, registered as a Trust.

Contact Information
Website: www.softfootalliance.com
Email: laurie.nomadarts@gmail.com
Address: The Soft Foot Homestead, Masikili Village,
Mabale, Hwange District Post office Box 10 Dete,
Zimbabwe
Facebook: www.facebook.com/softfootallianceInternational Permaculture Education Network (IPEN)
Increasing the effectiveness and coherence of permaculture education internationally
IPEN Case Studies have been enabled by the Lush Spring Prize