African Monarch Lodges with its portfolio of Nambwa Tented Lodge and Kazile Island Lodge launched The Sijwa Project in November 2018. The Sijwa Project has a broad vision of empowering the local community by creating jobs, preserving traditional knowledge, teaching skills and conserving the surrounding environment through a variety of proposed activities. With the highest rate of unemployment in Namibia found in the Zambezi Region, the owners of African Monarch Lodges, carefully structured a project that will address some of these problems through a holistic approach. This bold project is multi-faceted and in the end self-sufficient. The Sijwa Project is the re-purposing and re-inventing of all recyclable waste from the African Monarch Lodges and from the local community, into exquisite saleable craft and art. It’s an organic permaculture nursery to supply food for local people and lodge guests (mitigating the air and road miles lodge food usually travels). It’s also a cultural village, artisanal skills training center, a beehive project, a free-range egg scheme and a junior ranger-training venue. Plus, it’s an indigenous tree nursery for visitors to buy and plant a tree to offset their carbon footprint, looked after by a local ‘tree guardian’.