For Maasai and for any Tanzanians, for that matter, Ngorongoro is a name that simply rolls off the tongue. For those who aren’t familiar with the Ngorongoro Crater or Ngorongoro Conservation Area, however, it’s not so simple to pronounce or remember.
As NCN continues to grow as an organization and expand its outreach to Maasai people in Tanzania, we’ve come to a decision resulting in a small, but significant change. After deliberation, we decided it would be best for branding purposes and general simplicity to change the organization’s name on the website and social media. After looking at various other nonprofits and community organizations, we also decided it would be better to keep our name short and easy to remember. We love Ngorongoro but have found over and over that people cannot pronounce it, cannot spell it and cannot remember it—all factors that are not conducive to growing name recognition.
The nonprofit will still officially be called Ngorongoro Community Network, but on our website, Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, newsletter and elsewhere, it will be called Maasai Partners.
We feel that the word partners clearly reflects our goal of being the connection between various organizations within our network. Rather than starting from scratch with a completely new idea, we want to build on those efforts that have already been started but need some support. Our ‘partners’ aspect is quite important in international community development.
In order for positive change to happen, a serious endeavor must exist on a long term and united scale. Instead of a single group trying alone to improve a community, we push toward a broader impact by finding and bringing together individuals and organizations with similar goals. Through sharing ideas and resources and collaborating on projects, our network is able to achieve much more. We believe this interconnectedness is key for community development to be successful and long-lasting. Partners help each other and challenge each other to bring about real, sustainable change.
We’ve also revamped our vision and are in the midst of reworking our mission statement, both of which we feel will strongly embody the work Maasai Partners aims to do in Tanzania.
Additionally, we’ve joined Twitter—follow us here.
So spread the word, share our pages with those in your network and check out what we’ve got! Thank you for all the support!
