The Maribel Garcia Community Spirit Award is given each year to a Cornell student for making a remarkable, creative, specific contribution to the spirit of humanity.
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Ivonne Kienast began working in Africa in 2014 and since then has steadily deepened her ties with the continent, particularly in the Central African Republic, one of the lowest income countries in the world. Kienast’s determination to be of service earned her the Maribel Garcia Community Spirit Award.
Most recently, Kienast has been making an impact as the project manager and head researcher of the Dzanga Forest Elephant Project (DFEP), a collaboration guided by the motto maboko na maboko, “hand in hand” in the local Sango language. Started in 2021, it involves the Elephant Listening Project (ELP) of Cornell’s K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics and the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas (DSPA) management, consisting of the Ministry for Water and Forests of the government of the Central African Republic and the World Wildlife Fund, with support by anti-poaching organization Chengeta Wildlife. The project aims to stabilize or increase the elephant population and an intact rainforest in the DSPA by drawing on this network of expertise and developing the next generation of African conservationists.