Protected Area Management through Community Conservation

Many people have been asking how to assist me with development projects that I am working on in my village. I can not begin to tell you how greatful I am for any assistance that people can help with. Even if you can not help financially, a letter in the mail goes a long way! The first three months at my site have been spent trying to understand the needs of the community. Therefore, no real projects have materialized to date. groups have expressed needs and concerns for a more diversified selection of fruits and vegetables, which I am extremely excited. Mainly in my own backyard, I personally am supporting food security through income generation. In addition to income generation in my village, I am collaborating with the Danish Hunters Association & WildLife Environment Society of Malawi in an effort to support community conservation of customary lands. I am working to support Community trainings, along with the development of such CCA (Community Conservation Areas.)

Community conservation is an effort to empower the public to play an active role in the sustainable management of resident natural resources. In addition to protected area management, the roles of the organized Community Based Organization and others land stewards should be to integrate community involvement. Community training is an opportunity to expand community involvement in conservation, while assisting with the lacking civic education efforts. As role of facilitator, my hope is to organize community trainings for villages near Kuti Community Wild Park and the purposed Mpatsanjoka CCA. The trainings will be held haft day at the NRC educational center in Kuti Community Wildlife Park. Class topic will range from income generation to environmental education, but the focus will be to assist the needs and dificulties that the communities are currently expressing. The purposed training should run bi-monthly and should be an expense sustained by the CCA (community conservation area) in an effort to promote more community involvement.
The topics to be discussed will be those pertaining to the current problems addressed by the community. Currently in Malawi much of the environmental pressure on protected areas is due to financial concerns felt in the villages. In addition to financial anxiety, local community members feel a lack of ownership in a “restricted area.” Topics discussed should address these issues.

Example Topics:
Food-Security – Crop diversification
Sustainable/Conservation agriculture
Irrigation schemes
Soap Making
Jam Making
Charcoal Making (from Corn Husks)
Environmental Education: Wildlife protection, community conservation

The overlying goal of this project is sustainability. With sustainability in mind, it is my hope to train motivated patrons from the communities to deliver topics. This not only provides jobs to the community, but will assist in community members having ownership in the conservation project.

Initial assistance that friends and family back home can assist with would be educational resources to be presented during seminars. The additional financial logistics are still being discussed (paying the trainers and feeding people who attend). Thank you all for your help and please do not hesitate to write if you need any additional information or have questions on current or future projects.

CHEKOKI (my Yao name is evolving)
Kirk Longstein, Peace Corps
Box 284
Salima
Malawi

WORK HURTS!

You have good days and you have bad days as a Volunteer that is just the reality of the work. I have been in my village for three months now and the good and the bad go hand in hand. I have been trying to write more.
I wrote this after walking home frustrated. I waited all day for my group to show up to a meeting I had scheduled, but no one showed. Walking home I met with a few of the women in the group. They were the ones who were frustrated, that I didn’t provide enough money for our jam making project.

***No call, no show! It’s so hard to find good workers. If you want to find a job and keep your job, half the responsibility is showing up. I find myself scratching my head over this same phenomenon here in a rural village. Is it culture or an individual’s drive to accomplish that task which cannot be achieved without sweat? Work hurts! It challenges the mind and it hurts the back. I feel overwhelmed with a sense of pride, that I was raised not to fear work. The pride that I take in my work allows me to achieve the unattainable. In addition to empowering men and women in my village, I hope to leave this place a spirit of self directed work. Empowerment by no means will make people rich, but it could very well improve their daily subsistence, which proves to be a day to day struggle to survive. Are people lazy, uneducated, or educated into habitual laziness? I constantly debate this idea.
“Here in Malawi, we are poor, that’s our problem”
- A continued response when surveying village problems.
A lazy man observes the problem, and the successful man solves the problem. This is true in the states and even here in Malawi. Americans seem to be successful at the development of conveniences, but in times of economic or social hardship the ones who thrive are those who show up to work on time with the solutions to the problem. Poverty in developing nations might be political but the problem is not cultural. To help alleviate the pressures of poverty, the efforts should be redirected to the successful empowerment of the entrepreneurial work ethic within each individual.