On Safari was born with the idea to provide the best safari experiences directly with local operators, having in mind wildlife conservancy and responsible travel with a positive impact in the local community. An African safari is much more than just a holiday.

We want to introduce you to the Learn to Play initiative. Learn to Play Botswana is hoping to reach very impoverished villages where most of their children don't have exposure to any sort of early childhood education. 

We encourage all travellers to take part in the project taking materials and learning resources in that extra space not used in your luggage. Items that are always useful are:

• fabric offcuts that we can upcycle (this can be any fabric, cottons, prints, felt, textured fabrics etc.)
• crayons
• colour pencils
• wooden toys/blocks 
• DUPLO (the larger lego)
• wordless picture books 
• flashcards without words 
• exercise books without lines 
• creative toys such as puppets
• toys for action play e.g. balls and skipping ropes etc. 
• individual mats for children to sit on if that's possible
• art/craft resources e.g. paint, paintbrushes, pipe cleaners, decorating materials etc. 
• sensory play materials/resources/toys
• musical instruments
• would also be lovely to see any cultural toys etc from Europe that children traditionally play with :) 

Please note that they work on the principle of "sustainable play" so they do not allow any plastic toys or resources at the playgroups except the DUPLO. They would also prefer not to receive any soft toys or teddy bears as they are very hard to keep clean and sanitised. 

But we don't want this collaboration to be about just taking some materials, we want to go further. We are planning to include a visit and participation in one of their projects on all our future safaris. Do you have a skill you can teach? Can you teach children, are you good at storytelling, gardening, sewing, ...? Or maybe painting and drawing and arts and crafts? So why not volunteer for a morning, teaching children or parents... Let us know your ideas! 

Visit their website and find out their different initiatives and how can you help.