Projekt World Earth Day 2022

World Earth Day seems like the perfect time to start this year's project on Kilimanjaro. 50 indigenous young trees each were planted on the grounds of the SIA Shimbwe Primary School and at the Mapendo Women Group.

Together with the Mapendo Women Group and the Permaculture Foundation Tanzania, we are implementing a bee project in Shimbwe, a village in the highlands of the Moshi district, this year with financial support from the state capital Kiel. The aim of this project is to:

To support all participants financially by creating regular sources of income and thus contribute to an improvement in living conditions.

To maintain and increase the resilience and biodiversity of the ecosystem.

To sensitize children and adults to environmental and climate protection

In order to continue supporting the Himo Tree Nursery, we naturally purchased the young trees there.

The first 50 trees were to be planted on the grounds of the SIA Primary School in Shimbwe Chini. The planting holes had already been prepared and all the pupils were waiting for our team.

After a speech by our Tanzanian project coordinator Jonathan, who drew attention to the need to protect the environment, everyone enthusiastically set about planting the young trees under our expert guidance.

But the day was not over yet. We continued on to Shimbwe Juu to the Mapendo Women Group. This group was founded in 1997 by several widowed women in the village of Shimbwe and is registered as an association in Tanzania. At present, around 30 active female members are earning money on their 1 hectare of land by growing mushrooms (oyster mushrooms), which are sold on the local market. The profits generated are used to improve the women's livelihoods and to buy school supplies for needy children in the area. With our project, we would like to support this group by, among other things, providing them with the opportunity of beekeeping. To create the best possible conditions for this, we also planted 50 native young trees here, which serve as bee pasture.

Mapendo always welcomes all visitors with traditional dancing and singing. This warm welcome is always a pleasure.

After dancing together and introducing each other, we immediately set about planting the trees in the ground. Here, too, everything was well prepared; the holes were dug, compost was ready as fertilizer and curious children made sure there was enough water.

The day was drawing to a close and we were all completely satisfied with the tree planting campaign. The invited press representatives from Radio Kicheko, Daily News newspaper and Tanzanian Broadcasting Corporation television had collected enough material for their news to report on our commitment in Shimbwe.

Tanzanian Bees & Trees e. V. took another step for environmental protection, biodiversity and the empowerment of women on this day.