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Initial project launch brief for partners, potential partners and other interested parties. This is an open invitation. Whether you're ready to get involved now or just want to stay informed as this develops, we'd welcome hearing from you. Why are we doing this Frontline knowledge, such as that held by Community Engagement Practitioners (CEPs) in conservation, is complex, context-specific, and too often undervalued. What's missing isn't the knowledge, it's a way for it to tra

Reflections on David Kimali's Presentation to realife's Just Landscapes Working Group. realife is greatly thankful for David sharing his insightful learning with our collective. In Kenya's South Rift, pastoralist communities have long shared their landscape with lions, leopards and other large carnivores. It is a relationship built on generations of adaptation, negotiation and, at times, tension. But drought is changing the terms of that relationship, and not for the better.

Between October 2024 and August 2025 realife Learning was contracted by Oxfam Consults to conduct a learning review of Oxfam America’s Raising the Alarm on Protection Crises initiative. Oxfam committed to undertake six in-depth and wide-reaching protection analyses in situations that featured elevated risks to civilians for advocacy to influential stakeholders including the United Nations. These were undertaken in Burkina Faso, Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic R

A Just Landscapes blog by Angela Chappel The Green Learn 2 Earn project is a practical research programme focused on articulating and developing sustainable, tangible pathways for youth into the green economy. The project aims to develop and support viable occupationally directed learning pathways, from the ground up, for youth, in nine Green Learn 2 Earn pathways. The Environmental Learning Research Centre, Rhodes University together with UNICEF, DUCT and GroundTruth are in

Why this article has no author's name on it, and what that has to do with burnout, funding, and the kind of organisations that actually change anything. You'll notice there's no single name at the top of this piece. That's deliberate, and by the end we hope it will make complete sense. What follows is an argument that the way we usually do leadership (finding one impressive person, putting them out front, telling the world "they did this") and compensating them generously for

Participants from the 2024 'Transforming the Fenceline' course sharing their change projects at the Community Engagement Practitioner conference, October 2024. In the conservation sector, as with many other social and environmental sectors, the people who do the most navigating and hold the greatest knowledge tend to be the least recognised. Community Engagement Practitioners (CEPs) work at the physical fenceline between protected areas and the communities that live alongside

Introduction Evaluating work that unfolds within complex programmes and systems, especially those involving multiple stakeholders with varying interests, and diverse contexts, inevitably involves uncertainty. Programmes are often inspired by different ideas, pursue several objectives, and are shaped by layered decision making processes. Change may occur simultaneously across different levels, or so rapidly, that it becomes difficult to see clearly what matters most. In such e

We are all residing in, or perhaps between, countries which are either oppressing other countries, or their own people - or in ones which are being oppressed by others. One of the countries realife is based in, the UK, is complicit in ongoing genocide, and now a further illegal war on top of its leading and contribution to many past and present atrocities. In how we show up for work in justice focused organisations, the joy feels particularly far away. The realife team has wa

What is the Learning Landscapes approach? “This wasn’t learning for its own sake - it was survival work, care work, movement work. It was learning to stay in dignity and action, rooted in the urgencies that shape our daily lives” – Jane Burt, founding member of realife Learning At its heart, the Learning Landscapes approach recognises that learning should begin with the real experiences of injustice that people live through every day. It acknowledges that all knowledge system

Justice-driven organisations operate in complex, fast-moving contexts. They need learning systems that strengthen strategy and accountability without slowing the work down. This is the context in which realife Learning has now developed a long term partnership with the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) . IEJ is a South Africa–based research organisation advancing economic justice through rigorous research and policy advocacy across Africa. With a growing portfolio of proje

We’re excited to announce our new partnership with the Southern African Wildlife College (SAWC), a long-standing centre of learning rooted in some of the most complex conservation landscapes in the region. For nearly three decades, SAWC has supported rangers, conservation practitioners and natural resource managers to navigate the realities of protecting land, wildlife and livelihoods under immense pressure, from human–wildlife conflict to extractive practices and rapidly shi

We will be adding our creative commons resources, publications, tools, stories and more to this website in the coming months. We will also be telling the story of realife as a social enterprise and how we are practicing our values and ways of working throughout our internal structures, with our partners and across our work. The below video, as featured on our home page, was created by realife Learning member Michael Jaspen of The Film Guys - and features Jane Burt, Ludwig Ch