When I was working with ECHO-East Africa (April 2019 - March 2020) I applied to many organisations for funding to do all sorts of development work. Most applications were unsuccessful but yesterday I was invited to a training day to see the fruits of my labour with a couple of successful grants. The first was a large project to plant trees in degrading farmland on the mountain slopes in the Arusha area. This is in conjunction with Treedom - an Italian company. It will run for the next 5 years at least and will result in hundreds of thousands of trees established. Tree planting for the first year has just begun and I was able to see the ECHO team loading a truck load of seedlings to take up into the hills.
The main event today however was capacity building training. This was funded by the Australian Volunteers International and the Planet Wheeler Foundation under its Community Grants Scheme. Donkeys and bullocks are used as draught animals commonly in the Arusha region. They are often required to pull heavy loads with poorly designed harnesses and yokes and have shortened, painful lives as a result. ECHO and a couple of other NGOs have put together week-long training programs where farmers can learn how to make equipment to better suit their animals. Over the week they learn how to make padding, yokes, neck harnesses etc. from local and cheap materials and with minimal tools and how to ensure these suit the age and size of their animals.
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Hessian and plastic bags stuffed with straw
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Today was day three and everyone was so busy at their allotted tasks. I consider myself fortunate that I have been able to return to see how my past efforts as an AVP volunteer have helped in some way.
Tomorrow we cross into Kenya and will spend the weekend at Amboseli National Park.
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