Page 9 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt

The birth of Tacare 7
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for agriculture, the Rabobank Foundation for microfinance, and United Nations Chil- dren’s Fund (UNICEF) for water and environmental sanitation. And later we got money from the Packard Foundation for family planning and the Wanda Bobowski Fund for girls’ scholarships.
George, who had been working in agriculture for 15 years in that part of Tanzania, knew the importance of getting as many villagers involved as possible. He put together a small group of women who accompanied the team to the villages and enacted short skits about the significance of the environment. They were accompanied by a few local musicians and danc- ers. This was very popular, as visits from outside were rare in those days.
The JGI team was welcomed, and good relationships with these commu- nities were cemented.
We started, as the villagers had requested, by showing them how they could restore fertility to overused soil (without the use of fertilizers) through terracing, and by improving health and education facilities in the villages by working in collaboration with the local Tanzanian authorities. And, as the villagers came to trust JGI, and once we had obtained funding, we were able to introduce some of the other projects such as water man- agement, microcredit, and agroforestry.
Gradually our work extended to other villages. The original project description was no longer appropriate, and our project is now known simply as Tacare (pronounced “ta car eh”) and stands for “take care”—it takes care of people, the environment, and animals. As additional fund- ing became available, we were able to extend inland through the Greater Gombe Ecosytem and the huge area south of Gombe, the Masito-Ugalla part of the Greater Mahale Ecosystem (see map).
The Tacare model proves successful
Tacare, as the following chapters show, has become one of the most com- prehensive community-led conservation programs in Africa, designed to address poverty and support environmentally sustainable livelihoods. It