Stirring Up Change: A Gift That’s Opening Kitchen Doors in the Mara
It really is the season of seasoning.
At the Karen Blixen Camp Trust, we were thrilled to receive a generous donation of cookers, chef jackets and mechanical equipment from Ree Park Safari for our culinary school in the Maasai Mara. It’s the kind of gift that doesn’t just fill a kitchen. It changes what’s possible for the young people who train in it.
Because great dreams start in a great kitchen.
A kitchen with a purpose
The culinary school at Karen Blixen Camp gives young men and women from the local Maasai community the chance to train as chefs. For many students, it’s the first step into a professional career. For their families, it can mean a steady income. And for the Mara, it means more local people building their future in tourism, the industry that depends on protecting this landscape.
That’s why the right tools matter. A culinary student can only learn so much without proper equipment. With new cookers, students can practise the techniques they’ll use in professional kitchens. With new chef jackets, they look and feel like the professionals they’re becoming. And with mechanical equipment, the school can keep running smoothly for every new class.
For the young people training at the school, this means real equipment, real uniforms and a real step towards a career in hospitality.
Who is Ree Park Safari?
Ree Park Safari is a safari park in Denmark and one of the founding supporters of the Karen Blixen Camp Trust. The partnership goes back to the Trust’s earliest days.
The Trust’s story began in 2012, when Danish businessman Karsten Ree bought a camp on the banks of the Mara River, in the Mara North Conservancy. From the start, the camp supported projects that benefited its Maasai staff, the surrounding community and the region’s wildlife. In 2016, those projects found a permanent home when the Karen Blixen Camp Trust was registered as a Kenyan non-profit.
Since then, Ree Park Safari has provided vital funding that helps the Trust’s projects grow. This latest donation is one more chapter in a long friendship between a Danish safari park and a Kenyan community.
More than a kitchen: the bigger picture
Our partnership with Ree Park Safari is part of a shared commitment to creating meaningful opportunities for the people and wildlife of the Maasai Mara. Together, through the Karen Blixen Camp Trust, we support three pillars: education, community empowerment and wildlife conservation.
The culinary school sits alongside other Trust projects, including:
- The Mara North Conservancy Dog Project, which brings vets to the conservancy twice a year to vaccinate, spay and neuter domestic dogs, protecting both people and wildlife from disease
- The Mara North Conservancy Rabies Project, which vaccinates dogs and cats and teaches local schoolchildren how to prevent dog bites and rabies
- The Mara Elephant Project partnership, which received a helicopter from the Trust in 2022 to support its conservation work across a wider area
- The Maa Trust partnership on alternative rites of passage in Mara Rianta
Every one of these projects rests on the same belief: conservation lasts when the people who live alongside wildlife share in its benefits.
What this means when you visit
When you stay at Karen Blixen Camp, you’ll see the Trust’s work up close. Some of the meals you enjoy may be prepared with help from students at the culinary school. The game drives you take happen on land that Maasai landowners lease to the Mara North Conservancy for wildlife. And the camp itself is one of the Trust’s founding partners.
In other words, a Masai Mara safari here is responsible tourism in practice, not just in principle. You come for the leopards, the elephants and the sunsets, and you leave knowing your stay is part of something that lasts.
Curious to learn more? Ask our team during your stay. We’re always happy to share what’s happening in the kitchen and beyond.
Thank you, Ree Park
To everyone at Ree Park Safari: thank you. You’ve given our students more than tools. You’ve given them a head start.
And to everyone reading this, the best way to see this story for yourself is to come and visit. Our year-end offer runs from 1 November to 22 December 2026, with all meals, selected drinks, unlimited game drives, a night game drive and a bush breakfast, from KES 31,500 per adult per night for residents.
Call: +254 711 579 001 / +254 722 953 962 Email: info@karenblixengroup.com Web: www.karenblixencamp.com