SELF-RELIANCE is the ability to depend on oneself to get things done and to meet one’s own needs. An example of self reliance is growing one’s own food.
It could be said that it is the capacity to rely on one’s own capabilities, and to manage one’s own affairs; not to be dependent. Being self-reliant is presented to be the ability to take control over your life, being motivated from within, and being able to take care of yourself.
Starting when a child is young it is important to not do everything for them. Experts speak of different ways to develop self-reliance; such as accepting oneself, and being one’s own best friend, inner confidence, making own decisions, recognize and manage dependence, having one’s own values, not relying on ‘things’ to feel happiness and decide who one wants to be, and how to get there.
Important benefits of selfreliance are such that one can solve challenges, turn them into opportunities, become more confident, accept responsibility, embrace being alone and know that material things mean less.
It is under these backgrounds that the Eastern Arc Mountains Conservation Endowment Fund (EAMCEF) is taking concerted efforts to make sure that from young age, pupils are instilled with the sense of self-reliance – trusting their abilities to get through the challenges of life on the back of their own resourcefulness.
The Endowment Fund does that on the environment front, specifically regarding pupils and students whose families live near the Eastern Arc Mountains, on which there are forests that are main source of rain and water to many people in the country.
How is this done? It is through raising awareness in classes and more so practically in the fields by showing them how harmful environmental degradation is. This is the deterioration in environmental quality from ambient concentrations of pollutants and other activities and processes such as improper land use and natural disasters.
Mr Noe Kagine is the Masisiwe Primary School Head Teacher who insists on the need for pupils and students to be instilled with self-reliance ideas and implement the projects practically. The school is in Kilolo district of Iringa region – Southern Highlands of Tanzania.
The school and households of the pupils are near the Uzungwa Scarp that rises majestically over Kilombero Valley. This forest-clad escarpment is included in the Uzungwa Scarp Forest Reserve, one of the largest forest blocks in the Eastern Arc Mountains, extending over 32,763 hectares.
He says that EAMCEF that was established and functions as a long-term and reliable funding mechanism to support conservation, community development and researches, reached them with a tree-planting project, and has since been raising awareness on environmental conservation.
“EAMCEF officers came to us five years back and initiated the tree planting project, starting with one acre, but now they have developed to six acres. This year (2022) we sold some 13,774 seedlings; we are very thankful to EAMCEF for their support,” says Mr Kagine.
He unveils that they are going to restart planting tree seedlings during the new term at the school and put more efforts in having quality ones in huge quantity.
He noted that the benefits of planting trees in household farms are immense, as pressure on the forests is reduced because by pruning the trees pupils’ families could use the branches for cooking, instead of entering the forests to get firewood.
“We sensitize pupils on self-reliance from young age so that they grow with that in mind and carry out the idea practically by planting trees and avoid entering the forests. By so doing they also extend the spirit to other family members,” he says.
By selling the seedlings to individuals and institutions, Masesewe Primary School gets income that Mr Kigane says it is used to buy sugar so that pupils get porridge at school in the morning before getting lunch.
The money is also used to buy examination papers as well as printing the examination. Before the tree planting campaign, parents were footing the bills. Now they are happy that they no longer incur the huge costs.
Masesewe Secondary School has performed so well that it emerged the first winner among several schools in Kilolo district and was awarded 1,200,000/- Paul Mhagama is a pupil at the school who expresses his joy on the way they are raised in environmental conservation, adding that they are no longer disturbed in financial contributions.
This, in turn, he says has increased attendance and pupils stay until closure of the school in respective days, substantially reducing truancy. Mr Robert Sige, who is Kilolo District Forestry Officer, says through EAMCEF, his office has been engaging in capacity building to pupils and teachers in 17 schools in a bid to enhance environment conservation and see to it that Uzungwa Scarp is well maintained.
The reserve is included in the World Heritage Site nomination document for the Eastern Arc Mountains. The reserve is surrounded by eight villages. The Uzungwa Scarp forest has five plant and three vertebrate species that are strictly endemic to the reserve with another 15 Udzungwa endemic vertebrate species.
The forest also has populations of the Udzungwa-endemic Sanje mangabey and Iringa red colobus. Mr Sige says impact of the project is immense as schools initiate environmental clubs to conserve the environment, earn income through sale of seedlings, get fruits and shade from the trees, hence are healthy.
The projects have led to people around the forests become everybody’s guard against encroaching the forest, hence maintain bionuai in the Arc Mountains is preserved, so that people get water for different activities.
Those include home and industrial use as well as for irrigation, agriculture being the backbone to the country’s economy. EAMCEF’s Southern Zone Projects Officer, Ms Rosemary Boniface says the Endowment Fund invests heavily in the project in different schools, so as to come up with a generation that loves and treasures environment conservation.
“We purposely sought to work with schools and pupils under the district councils, so that the pupils grow up knowing the importance of safeguarding the environment for betterment of this and future generations,” says Ms Boniface.
Generally in planting trees, she says, villagers can also keep bees and get honey as well as other products for eating, have their health improved. There is also the business component that earns families more income to cater for different costs, such as constructing and refurbishing residential houses, washrooms and improve pass rates.
EAMCEF was established in 2001 as a mechanism to provide for long-term, reliable and sustainable funding for biodiversity conservation in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania. EAMCEF was set up as a joint initiative of the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania, the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and now operates as a non-for-profit Trust.
EAMCEF’s mission is to catalyze resources to foster conservation of forest biodiversity in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania through investment in sustainable community development, sustained financing for protected areas management and financial support to applied research.
The main intention of establishing EAMCEF is to address the need for a long-term sustainable approach to funding the conservation of forest biodiversity in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania.
The Eastern Arc is recognized globally as a biodiversity hotspot with some of Africa‘s most unique biodiversity; however, human activities have reduced drastically the original extent of forest cover.
The Eastern Arc Mountain forests form major catchment areas that collectively provide water for most of Tanzania‘s coastal communities, including Dar-es-Salaam with a population of over three million people and most of the major industries in the country.
EAMCEF came about as a result of reforms which had been taking place in Tanzania over the past twenty years. The National Forest Policy (1998), which emphasizes biodiversity conservation through multidisciplinary approaches by multiple stakeholders as well as the Trustees‘ Incorporation Ordinance provide strong political and legal support for the Fund‘s activities. EAMCEF is governed by a Board of Trustees that includes five members representing government, local communities, conservation NGOs and academia.
EAMCEF is mandated to receive advice and guidance from Local Advisory Committees in each area where it finances projects. The Local Advisory Committees elect the two community-level board members.
EAMCEF funding is on three priority thematic areas namely community development and conservation activities for improvement of rural livelihoods of forest adjacent communities, applied biodiversity research relevant to the conservation of biodiversity in the priority Eastern Arc Mountains and management of forest reserves and protected areas to strengthen the management capabilities.
