Page 13 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt
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The birth of Tacare 11 Education: Roots & Shoots
A final and very important component of Tacare is our environmental and humanitarian program for youth, Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots. From the very beginning we introduced this program into the village schools. It is a program for all ages and encourages children to choose projects to improve the lives of people, animals, and the environment. The children plant trees, grow organic food in school gardens, and learn about wildlife and the importance of preserving biodiversity. All the effort we put into protecting habitats and improving lifestyles will be useless unless new gen- erations grow up to be better stewards of the planet than we have been.
The success of the Tacare approach
The Tacare method has a proven track record. We have achieved success- ful partnerships with hundreds of thousands of villagers, improved their health and education facilities, provided family planning information, empowered women to take a stronger role in village life, and encouraged villagers to respect and protect their environment and engage in environ- mentally sustainable livelihoods. We have acquired a sophisticated under- standing of socio-ecological and political systems that has enabled us to work harmoniously with farmers, village leadership, and local and cen- tral government authorities. We have learned how to combine innovative mapping technologies and local traditional knowledge and integrate sci- ence into local decision-making processes to develop smart conservation and land use plans. In this way we have been able to encourage villages to adopt new, improved agricultural and market practices, while simultane- ously protecting the environment—the broader landscape they rely on for long-term survival. And to conserve and restore the all-important forest ecosystems with their rich biodiversity.
JGI has also developed Tacare-type programs in Burundi, Uganda, DRC, the Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Guinea, and a similar pro- gram is being developed in Mali.
