This project provides knowledge of working hives, management skills of bee products, skills in creating an alternative source of livelihood for Batwa pygmies evicted from their indigenous home in the Bwindi forest when the area was conserved as a national park. Through training on the demonstration apiary and home to home extension services, the Batwa will be supported with tools, knowledge of production and value addition and helped to access market of their products thus generating incomes
The Bwindi forest provided the native people's livelihood before becoming the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in 1991. Hopes that gorilla tourism would bring local development and jobs proved false as poverty instead increased. Batwa are highly affected as they were evicted from their homeland in the forest, are less educated, malnourished and impoverished. Improving subsistence agriculture to provide food security and alleviate poverty enhances the environmental security of the national park
Training and supporting the Batwa in constructing bee hives, site selection, honey and wax processing, packaging and marketing and value addition chain will help them maintain bee keeping as a business and enable them to earn a sustainable living.
The project will assist 100 Batwa pygmies to develop the means to get out of poverty by enabling them to pay school fees for their children and provide them with improved nutrition. This will also reverse the current course where these families are forced into poaching to feed themselves and will help transform them into a future generation of environmental conservationists
