Our sincere gratitude to everyone who came out to help us celebrate one year of the Alliance for Human Animal Coexistence in Denver this past week!

Over the last week we’ve had the pleasure of hosting some of our Kenyan colleagues here in Denver for a series of events that brought more than 100 people together from across North America and Africa to celebrate one year since the official launch of the Alliance for Human Animal Coexistence. Thanks to the generosity of more than 50 individual donors and members of this community, we were able to mobilize over $23,000 USD - exceeding our goal of $20,000 - while building community and a sense of shared purpose around our vision to unify the well being of people, animals, and the environment. We are deeply humbled and grateful to everyone who took part in making these events such a success, especially our amazing board members, the event organizing committee, and everyone who contributed to our silent auction. 

The ‘Sundowner’ theme of the events, which is an African tradition in which safarists assemble together to reflect and share stories of their journey and encounters in the African wild, was intended to invite people to think about the role of stories in our lives and in our relationships to the living world. Stories are central to what it means to be human because they frame human experience and beliefs. But human beings are not merely story tellers; our lives are an embodied narrative that unfolds over time. Our life stories manifest our values, our hopes, our fears, and even our dreams. So over the course of the last week, we asked the members of the AHAC community to consider: of what stories do you want to be a part? What stories do you want to tell with your life? And we invited everyone to join us on this journey and discover the unique contribution we each have to make in the still unfolding story of how we as humans can learn to coexist with other animals and the living world.

AHAC’s story emerged from a place of deep friendship and mutual care among our co-founders - for each other, for animals, the environment, and collectively for this beautifully interdependent world we share with every other living creature, and which we all have a hand in shaping. Ours is also a story defined by a deep commitment to seeking and promoting balance - in ourselves, in our relationships to each other, other animals, and living systems, and in how we think about making change towards a more harmonious and compassionate world. In a time that feels increasingly polarized and like we are being pulled apart and pushed to the edges, we have endeavored to stay anchored in the middle, away from binaries, outside of silos, an arms length away from false certainty and easy answers, somewhere in the messy in between. Asking questions like: how do we walk the line between being deeply humble about the limitations of our knowledge when it comes to intervening in systems as complex and co-evolving as human-animal relationships, whilst also maintaining the belief that we know enough about these relationships to do something positive and useful? How do we maintain the dialogue that must be achieved between our universal aspirations towards a world that safeguards the wellbeing animals and ecosystems, on the one hand, and the culturally specific, place-based ways in which those universal aspirations will take shape and become a reality in local contexts, on the other? And how can we do this work in a way that intentionally blurs the line between what are often siloed institutions, approaches, and dispositions? How do we integrate the sociological and the biological; the academic and the advocate; the theoretical and the practical; the scientific and the creative; the empirical and the immeasurable; the individual and the relational? How do we balance a sense of urgency in the face of the planetary challenges we face, with the patience and prudence necessary for deep thinking and durable solutions? How do we balance the push towards public and online visibility with a commitment to personal presence and mindfulness? How do we balance pressures towards certainty and knowability with an embrace of wonder, mystery, doubt, and complexity? And how do we fold hope, humility, and curiosity into everything that we do, positioning AHAC as a learning platform, rather than a static institution? At AHAC we are led by questions like these, and we don’t pretend to have easy answers or final solutions. But we do believe that positive change is possible, and that whatever good we do for animals and ecosystems today, in this moment, isn’t invalidated by any future outcome that awaits us. 

Since our launch last Spring, our on-the-ground coexistence projects include species ranging from butterflies and bees, elephants and cheetahs, to stray dogs and donkeys, and we have engaged more than 2,500 local community members in the leading the implementation of these projects. Our regranting program designed to cultivate and nurture possibilities for human-animal coexistence through the provision of small grants ranging up to $10,000 USD to innovative initiatives that are unifying the well-being of people, animals, and the environment across Africa has already benefitted fifteen grantee organizations across the continent with more grants being disbursed every other quarter, and we also provide annual partnership and fiscal sponsorship grants to an additional six organizations. Our experiential exchange program that facilitates mutually beneficial exchanges and points of reciprocity between North America and Africa has coordinated multiple veterinary service trips that bring volunteers from around the world to Africa to support local efforts to advance One Health and has reached thousands of dogs, cats, and donkeys with otherwise unattainable veterinary care. Our research and knowledge exchange work is bringing African perspectives and philosophies on coexistence to a global audience. And our ‘Conservation Safaris’ are allowing travelers to experience the wonders of an African Safari in way that is ecologically-minded and supports conservation. 

But this first year has not been about tooting our own proverbial horn; it has been about learning and step by step, brick by brick, laying a principled foundation for an organization that can meaningfully help people, animals, and ecosystems thrive together, not just in theory but in practice. In a world increasingly strained by ecological degradation, social inequities, and competing demands on natural resources, the idea of coexistence has proven not to be an idealistic aspiration, but actually a practical and necessary pathway forward. Throughout the year, AHAC has worked to reposition the human–animal relationship from one of dominance and exploitation to one of responsibility, respect, reciprocity, and shared survival – and our engagements this year have consistently reinforced a central truth: that human wellbeing is inseparable from animal wellbeing, and both are inseparable from the health of the ecosystems we all share.

At AHAC we believe that our world, and all of us as individuals who care deeply for it, desperately need hopeful stories that bring to light what’s possible when committed people from around the globe come together and draw upon what they have to create positive change that upholds our moral obligations to each other, other animals, and the natural world. We created AHAC in an endeavor to offer this in a way that is tangible, accountable, and rooted in friendship and shared purpose. We want to sincerely thank everyone that has come out in support of our work this past week and joined us on this journey to discover the unique contribution we each have to make in the still unfolding story of how we as humans can learn to coexist with other animals and the living world.