ANOUSCHKAA LIFE LIVED IN SONGS
From a star’s perspective, we are only
here for a short time. Let’s leave things
better than we arrived.Anouschka
IN OTHER WORDS

Give it back

✧

The work Anouschka supports alongside her songwriting:protecting wildlife, education out of poverty, and single mothers.

The single
Anouschka performs her song “Dying to Be Free” — a voice for all the animals
Field-guide training in the South African bush
The Dark Lioness · click to enlarge

Wildlife Advocate

“Dying to Be Free” was written at the request of the South African author Gareth Patterson to protest canned lion hunting.

The song tells the true story of the murder of the Dark Lioness during a canned lion hunt.

It became the campaign song of the Global March Against Lions in 2014, and of the Campaign Against Canned Hunting.

The march could not be presented as planned: a protest broke out and there were bombings, so Anouschka performed the song on radio in Nairobi instead.

Gareth Patterson is an environmentalist, independent wildlife researcher and author who has worked for more than twenty-five years for the protection of African wildlife. He wrote Cry for the Lions, Where the Lion Walked, The Lions’ Legacy, Last of the Free, With My Soul Amongst Lions, Dying to be Free, Making a Killing, To Walk with Lions and The Secret Elephants.

The song came out of that landscape: Anouschka volunteered in South Africa and trained as a field guide in the bush there, and “Dying to Be Free” was written from the time she spent in it.

Anouschka with her guitar beside an open book, a dried rose and strands of pearls
Her own words
IN HER OWN WORDS

The artist’s statement

People often ask me why I am so adamant about the need to protect other species- why I don't "care" about starving people and abused children instead. I am always surprised by the fallacy in that assumption. Of course I care, but that doesn't make it any less important.

The statement she wrote for the campaign, kept here exactly as she issued it.

Read the artist’s statement
The first desks
Desks from the 2016 crowdfunding campaign arriving at the school
Named Chadi and honoured at the school
Honoured by the teachers at the school

Education Out of Poverty

In 2016 Anouschka crowd funded the money to seat 604 at-risk children at desks for the first time at Watamu Primary School.

In Watamu Anouschka was given the name Chadi by the Giriama tribe as thanks for her work in the community.

The campaign also paid the school’s water bill for a year, so there was water to drink in the heat, and fitted 120 children in new uniforms after years in the same ones.

Anouschka still sponsors two girls with school fees.

Khadija, Tunda, Eddie, Daniel and Emmanuel in the Kingsway School office

Milele Children

An NGO based in Boston, USA, helping orphans and single mothers and their children in poverty attend school.

The organization pays school fees, food and uniforms for 33 poor children between the ages of 4-23 in the coastal area of Malindi, Kenya. It focuses on helping poor, single parents, mostly women, so that the children can stay at home, instead of being given to an orphanage with the hope of a donor paying for their education.

Why we do it: does helping a few children seem like a drop in the ocean? Think again! It only takes one child to become the next leader of our world. One educated child within a community to change that community’s future. One educated child to shine a light for others to follow.

Anouschka sits on the Board of Directors.

Anouschka also works with the Lea Mwana Children Center in Malindi, Kenya: in 2016 Anouschka paid the electricity bill and for an exercise programme from local gym trainers, in 2015 she paid for Christmas presents of books and crayons, and in 2014 she paid school fees for two boys to stay in school after their sponsor dropped out.