Microsoft

A major win in our digitization plan, has been the successful collaboration with Microsoft through the Microsoft4Afrika initiative.
In addition to supporting us with discounted licenses and support, Microsoft4Africa sent us a Microsoft data engineer (David) all the way from Seattle.

David spent 10 days at LOC, helping fast-track our leap towards a secure, modern IT & data infrastructure.
Read David’s report here.

Another part of our technology development efforts, has been the the successful Zindi campaign and subsequent implementation of the machine learning model developed from there and the Beach Suitability mapping with our mobile app.

A big thanks goes out to Candice Pelser who has volunteered her time to mentor and guide the technology development team and Enviroserve who have donated computer equipment to LOC.

Zindi

Zindi is a community of data scientists that collaborate with organisations to solve data issues, over the past 6 months we have had the privilege of working with them.

LOC has embarked on a process of transitioning its database from an in-house hosted database to an online cloud server. Previous data needed cleaning and verification before being pushed to the new platform. LOC partnered with Zindi to run a competition that invited scientists from all over the world to solve a problem that LOC experienced with cleaning its data.

From this competition, three solutions emerged. The solutions were applied to LOC’s Turtle Bycatch data and helped flag errors and anomalies. This process reduced the time required to clean the data significantly, transforming an exercise that would literally have taken many months, down to a couple of weeks. This was just the start of what we hope to be a longer-term collaboration with the Zindi team.

Thank you Zindi for your support with this campaign.

KWS

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) Watamu, hosts a number of university students for their internships. The students major in environmental science, ecotourism, wildlife management, community development and various majors that are relevant to the environment. Part of their internship involves participating in LOC’s marine conservation activities. We had the opportunity to share our work with 6 students, with an aim to create outstanding Kenyan’s who are conscious of the environment particularly where marine conservation is concerned.

Thank you KWS for playing a significant role in our conservation efforts.

Watamu Treehouse

In February 2019 we had the opportunity to bring the LOC staff team together for a session aimed at co-creating the values on which the team will build the organisation The principals and standards of behaviour that were developed aim to create a thriving environment for the staff and for our visitors and partners. They are also aimed at ensuring that the organisation meets its goals and leads by example in the communities we operate in.

We extend our gratitude to Watamu Treehouse for hosting us and Candice Pelser and Kaspar Paur for taking a moment to plan and facilitate this process.

P.S. The lovely souls of Watamu Treehouse have extended their support by sponsoring an Eco Visit package for our crowdfund – see the Treehouse reward here.