The Ropes of Hope

Welcome

The Ropes of Hope NGO was born from the dreams of a few ocean lovers on a coral restoration course, held recently in Tanzania, East Africa. The goal of The Ropes of Hope is to halt the decline of the coral reefs of the Mafia Island Marine Park and surrounds, damaged by multiple bleaching events and an increase in unsustainable fishing practices, as a direct result of the economic impact of COVID19 on jobs and livelihoods among the people of the Mafia archipelago. We are approaching the coral reef ecosystem of the park holistically, by including the local communities that live in the park who now depend on the natural resources of the park for their survival. You are invited to join us in this amazing adventure! You can help us by liking and sharing our social media posts, by supporting us financially with a donation or by sponsoring a coral, a rope of corals or a even a whole nursery or by joining us to get hands-on and become a coral gardening practitioner. Asante sana. Thank you so much. Tulinde Matumbawe yetu. Let’s save our corals!

What we do

Our work will be based on three core pillars:

Create a gene bank

To collect and propagate as many different species, and genotypes within species, as possible from “corals of opportunity” . Corals of opportunity are fragments of

Research

To conduct well controlled and monitored research on methods for cost-effective reef regeneration and how to stimulate natural coral recruitment. Growing corals is a rapidly

Community involvement

To involve the fishers of the islands within the park in coral propagation and regeneration to raise awareness of the economic importance of the reefs

Follow our story!

Nursery building time! A learning curve

Posted in Blogs by Kitukiblu on March 21, 2023

We have built two new rope nurseries to up our coral growing game! The first step of building a nursery is site selection. Selecting a

Nursery stocking and ex-planting missions!

Posted in Blogs by Kitukiblu on March 21, 2023

We have had a busy few days over at Thanda Island looking after our coral nurseries together with resident marine biologist Rianne and coral

New nurseries!

Posted in Blogs by Marretje Adriaanse on November 22, 2021

We had a busy week last week. We built two new nurseries in an action-packed three day trip to Thanda Island Private Marine Reserve. We

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OUR TEAM

Jean de Villiers, PhD

Project Leader & Chief Scientific Officer

Jean de Villiers is the founder and Chief Scientific Officer of The Ropes of Hope. He has a background as a molecular biologist and coral restoration practitioner and is leading the project.

Jean de Villiers, PhD

Anne de Villiers, MSc

Founder Member & Chief Community Liaison Officer

Anne de Villiers is a development professional with an expertise in developing strategies for sustaining meaningful positive outcomes in communities.

Anne de Villiers, MSc

Hatibu Shehe, BEd

Founder Member & Project Coordinator

Hatibu is the Jibondo/Kitutia project manager and also the Coral Conservation Club project manager.

Hatibu Shehe, BEd

Nicole Schroeter, MSc

Founder Member & Scientific Advisor

Nicole is a PhD student from Germany, studying the effects of reef restoration efforts by The Ropes of Hope on the biodiversity of reefs in Mafia Island, while trying to improve biodiversity monitoring tools using environmental DNA (eDNA) and other non-invasive techniques.

Nicole Schroeter, MSc

Teddy Lugeye, MSc

Staff Scientist

Teddy is a molecular biologist. Every year, The Ropes of Hope secures academic training for a Tanzanian to do research on corals and biodiversity. As a result of this, she extracts DNA from the coral on Kitutia.

Teddy Lugeye, MSc