Pathways Africa-Missouri

We established a grassroots organization called The Rural Environmental Education Program in Shaviringa (TREES). We conducted environmental awareness activities in the local communities and schools. With funding from The World Bank and the USAID, indigenous tree nurseries were established and distributed at a small fee. Makuchi Link Youth Group and Mahanga Village Youth Bunge have assisted in our initiatives. Environmental meetings are regularly conducted. Communities have been exposed environmental education as well as income-generating activities including good farming practices. To distribute our indigenous tree seedlings, we worked with youth and women groups, local leaders, farmers, school children and teachers. We have distributed over 20,000 tree seedlings. We worked with regional NGOs to introduce income-generating activities including passion fruit farming, bee-keeping, and silk farming. As an incentive, we have distributed over 12,000 pens and pencils in our school supplies programs resulting in several environmental clubs. Students enjoy writing about natural resources and several school gardens are providing the much needed vegetables at their schools. Our challenges stem from population growth, poverty, high unemployment, cultural practices, and inadequate environment knowledge. These challenges are compounded by small farm sizes and dependency on subsistence farming. To overcome these obstacles, we used a multi-faceted approach to disseminate our initiatives. The strategy of investing in group activities was a major boost to our activities. By offering tree seedlings at subsidized fee, it made our efforts become acceptable. By working with community elders, our programs have been widely accepted in the community. To break the cultural barriers, we worked with elders in telling traditional stories to school children as a means of reclaiming the value of traditional indigenous knowledge.