July 2010 - Pafuri Camp - a partnership between Safari Adventure Company and the Makuleke Community - has been chosen by the Equator Initiative's Technical Advisory Committee as one of the 25 outstanding winners of the Equator Prize 2010. The Equator Prize recognises and celebrates outstanding community efforts to reduce poverty through the conservation of biodiversity. Since its inception in 2002, the Equator Prize has honoured the work of 103 exceptional communities in equatorial countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Equator Prize winners are selected on the principal criteria of impact, partnerships, sustainability, innovation and transferability, leadership and community empowerment, as well as gender equality and social inclusion. Pafuri Camp joins an elite group of Equator Prize winners, constituting an influential grassroots movement of local and indigenous best practice in biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction.

As this global network grows in size, so too it grows in influence, and the Makuleke Community and Pafuri Camp look forward to working and connecting with other Equator Prize winners as well as being part of the Community Summit, a community "dialogue space" that will facilitate peer-to-peer learning, community presentations, and special events and training related to biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction. The Summit will take place in September 2010 in New York.

According to the judges, the level of competition for the prize was extremely high and the depth of nominations received was truly impressive. Among this year's remarkable entries, Pafuri Camp presented a strong demonstration of the ingenuity of community-based work currently being undertaken in Africa.

Safari Adventure Company is proud that its initiative and all the hard work the Makuleke Community and Pafuri Camp have put in since 2005 has been recognised and commended in such a prestigious manner.