LCWT provides a range of biodiversity friendly livelihood options: What happens when one woman accesses them all?
The LCWT supports communities with several ways of improving livelihoods that do not lead to biodiversity loss. Village based savings and loans groups called Community Conservation Banks, or COCOBAs, engage in beekeeping, wild mushroom collection, coffee production and even teaching people how to build and market fuel efficient wood stoves. Neema Elias, a 33-year-old daughter of Burundian Refugees, and mother of 3, shows us what happens when someone is motivated and trained to try them all!
Before the LCWT, Neema, a resident of Kajeje village in Katumba settlement in Katavi Region, was a small holder, mainly subsistence farmer, who sold charcoal on the side to try to make ends meet (like most residents of Kajeje). She could typically only afford one meal per day and she was unable to provide for her children’s school material needs. Health bills were difficult to cover and much of her time was spent traveling long distances for water and health care for her family.
Neema has taken the training she has received from the LCWT and combined it with her natural business sense and changed the trajectory of her life and her family’s lives.
When LCWT began working in Katumba Settlement (where Burundians settled back in 1972) Neema immediately joined a COCOBA (in 2018). These Community Conservation Banks are village savings and loan groups that focus members on providing each other loans to build environmentally friendly income-generating activities. She was an active member who immediately began benefiting from the loans, working towards her dream of earning enough to provide for her family’s needs.
To this she added training on how to build and market fuel efficient stoves. LCWT provided her the training needed and she continues to build and sell these stoves to other households in her community. These stoves reduce the amount of wood needed to cook, directly reducing the amount of firewood collected, not only reducing the workload on women (fuelwood collection) but also reducing impacts on local forests.
In 2020, Neema added beekeeping to her suite of income-generating activities, joining a beekeeping group supported by the LCWT. With only 3 traditional hives, she is not a major honey producer, but the income adds to improving her life and provides some diversity in terms of products and income.
Then in 2021, Neema brought her wild mushroom collection skills to a collection group organized by the LCWT. Wild mushrooms are only available during part of the year (rainy season) but teaming up with other like-minded women increases her ability to benefit from these sustainable forest products.
Did we also mention that Neema and her husband also benefit from the LCWT’s Family Planning support? She credits this support with giving her time and resources to pursue all these endeavors and better provide for her family, confirming, at least anecdotally, the LCWT’s theory of why Family Planning can be an effective tool in forwarding biodiversity conservation.
Today, Neema is the proud owner of an agricultural input store in Kajeje, an achievement she credits to a loan from the COCOBA. Thanks to profits from this store, Neema recently purchased 5 acres of farmland in her village where she is growing vegetables and sunflowers for the market in the nearby City of Mpanda.
She no longer struggles for the basics of life and can send her children to school, fully equipped. She recently purchased a motorbike which simplifies her life in many ways. Ever the entrepreneur, however, she rents out the motorbike when she does not need it!
Not satisfied with these accomplishments, Neema still has plans for improving her life. She wants to build a better house for her family and expand her agribusiness shop. She also wants to send her children to a private secondary school when the time comes. In addition, her COCOBA group, which she now leads as chairperson, has plans to support the purchase of a sunflower processing machine to benefit all its members.
Tag: NewsOne