Chronicle Editor
Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter
A GROUP of conservationists has mobilised about 80 legendary sportspersons from different countries and disciplines for virtual Conservation Games whose aim is to raise awareness and funding for wildlife conservation.
Zambesia Conservation Alliance came up with the #SportForConservation initiative, which then gave birth to the Conservation Games.
The games are a series of 20-minute long ‘quiz style’ encounters where players battle it out in a war of knowledge on virtual media platform Zoom, with a member of each team facing off against a player from the opposite side.
They will be asking each other about their careers, conservation and “Whacky Wild” whereby players randomly select an animal and are expected to act out a funny scene imitating the chosen species. Each correct answer earns the player two points. The videos are posted for viewing by the public.
Players are drawn from seven countries along the Zambezi Valley, including Zimbabwe, with the likes of former Warriors players Peter Ndlovu and Bruce Grobbelaar, the Black tennis siblings Wayne, Byron and Cara, cricketers Andy and Grant Flower, Sean Williams and Hamilton Masakadza, and others from various sporting disciplines.
The players have been pooled into four teams and each is named after one of the big five animals, Lion, Buffalo, Elephant and Leopard, with the Rhino left for the ultimate stage to follow afterwards.
Each team has a captain to lead in both the fundraising challenge and online shootout match.
The latest encounter hosted by Tino Mawoyo was between Ndlovu, who lost 9-16 to former cricketer John Rennie.
One of the organisers Luke Brown, who is based in Victoria Falls, said the idea is to use sportspersons’ influence worldwide to raise awareness and raise funds for conservation to support those in the frontline of conservation in the region
“The Zambesia Conservation Alliance is devising new and unique ways to raise conservation awareness.
Instead of being another conservation organisation, we want to do things a little bit differently and we came up with the idea of sport for conservation where we have sportsmen and women that have represented their countries at the highest level or have played professional sport in cricket, soccer, rugby, sailing, biking, golf, tennis and others .
“We have about 80 names and most of them from Zimbabwe and are divided into different teams. They compete head to head in a series of quiz style encounters for about 20 minutes per match, with one player representing each team. It’s been fun and we have got a lot of support from all players that have signed up,” said Brown.
He said players are taken through conservation issues by experts on WhatsApp during the week and every Friday they get together online on a Zoom call to discuss what they would have learnt.
This way they become their country’s wildlife and conservation ambassadors and support tourism.
“Sportspeople are no longer only players, but are learning on conservation so that they can help create as much awareness as possible on conservation and make people understand the value of wildlife and complications of looking after wild animals. We want them to use the influence they have across the globe to create awareness. The programme has donation platforms and proceeds go towards wildlife conservation,” Brown said.
The Conservation Games have also been featured on Zimbabwe Tourism Authority spokesperson Godfrey Koti’s Ultimate Tourism Chat episode six. — @ncubeleon
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