Support Women's WONDER Hubs in Tanzania

Greetings to all our supporters, 

As we plan ahead for the spring, we have been working hard with our Tanzanian team to develop a data collection system for the community women who participate in the Women's Earth Project. Over the past two years, they have been actively engaged in community outreach activities in Tanzania's Southern Highlands, providing education and implementable techniques to strengthen water health, human-wildlife co-existence, climate resilient agriculture, and livestock health. Anecdotally, their activities have produced widespread benefits that have led to improved food security, strengthened animal and human health, and elevated valuation of wildlife and biodiversity. We have some limited data to back this up; however, we recognize that in order to scale-up the program and garner more support, we have to create a uniform system of data collection for these women to provide concrete evidence of the transformational changes they're creating in their communities.

We believe that data collection will be a game-changer for these women tackling One Health challenges. By gathering local data on things like disease trends, clean water access, and crop health, these women, working hand-in-hand with regional experts, will be able to provide critical information on how their interventions are strengthening human, animal, and environmental health and wellbeing. We hope that in doing so, we'll be putting the power of data directly into their hands, allowing them to be instrumental in driving positive change in the Southern Highlands. Ultimately, the data they collect will lead to informed decisions, resulting in healthier communities and ecosystems. 

Plus, by empowering these women to lead data collection, we’re making One Health efforts more inclusive and resilient. They become innovators, actively shaping their futures with the tools to advocate for the resources and policies they need. For contributors like you, this is an opportunity to support a movement where local women lead the charge, using technology and information to create lasting, meaningful impact. It’s not just about numbers—it’s about unlocking potential and transforming communities!

Asante Sana, 

Kate and the EcoVet Global / FOECOE Teams

Greetings, 

While our Tanzanian and U.S. teams are currently busy writing grants for the WONDER Hub Project, the community women in Tanzania's Southern Highlands have been fully immersed in providing community outreach to neighboring villages. These outreach events cover topics under the One Health umbrella, spanning animal health, climate resilience, water health, and biodiversity protection. The community women regularly send us photos, offering glimpses into their weekly activities. This past week, the women of Itonya traveled to a nearby village, Uluti, to talk to local farmers about human-wildlife coexistence. This is a topic of great contention and interest for small-holder farmers of this region. Living so closely enmeshed with the land and surrounding wildnerness, farmers have frequent encounters with wildlife scavenging for food, drinking from the same watering holes, or simply migrating through the area.

While wildlife can be a source of national pride and generate money for tourism, they can also wreak havoc to crops, cause injury or death to villagers, and devastate small herds and flocks of animals. However, there is gradual awareness that wild animals also confer many benefits that keep ecosystems biodiverse and healthy. These benefits translate to healthier soil, carbon sequestration, maintenance of nutrient cycles, and clean air to breathe - all components that are fundamental to local livelihoods and wellbeing. Through outreach programs in local and surrounding communities, the women of Itonya and Mboliboli are providing a toolbox of implementable strategies (e.g., chili fences, scarecrows, and bee hive fences etc.) that deter wildlife from encroaching on their farmland. Ultimately, these cheap and simple techniques have been highly effective at keeping wildlife, as well as humans and their crops and animals, safe from harm. Programs such as this are critical to promoting human-wildlife coexistence. 

We hope to have more exciting news to report on this fall! As always, we appreciate your continued support and interest in this project. Stay tuned, we are on the cusp of some wonderful new developments.

Warmly,

Kate and the FOECOE / EVG Teams