Women-led, One Health Solutions in Tanzania

The Women’s EARTH Project has had a busy and productive winter and spring! Thanks to your generous support, we were able to provide two complementary One Health workshop training programs to over 60 women in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania. Through these workshops, we have gained the support of a growing number of local and regional stakeholders. This positive momentum is incredibly important since only 0.2% of foundation dollars go toward women-led environmental initiatives. From the bottom of our collective hearts, thank you!

Our Tanzanian partners, Jesca and Eliza, who run the Foundation for Environmental Conservation and Community Enhancement (FOECOE), had to come up with a creative alternative to in-person trainings during the rainy season in Tanzania. Unable to travel to our partner communities due to impassable roads, they kept the women and project stakeholders engaged through a series of interactive phone call meetings. During these phone calls, Jesca and Eliza reviewed One Health topics spanning biodiversity protection, climate change mitigation, and regenerative enterprise endeavors that strengthen human-wildlife coexistence. The women were encouraged to prioritize critical environmental and animal health challenges they face, and through this exercise, identify key themes to incorporate into the spring and summer workshop curricula. The women from both communities expressed a unanimous desire to learn more about poultry health and husbandry within the context of One Health and environmental change.  

Now well into spring, we are happy to report that women from both Kilolo and Pawaga districts completed a poultry One Health training workshop in April of 2022. Integrating this newly acquired knowledge into indigenous eco-farming practices, the women are fast becoming intersectional health and environmental leaders. As we head into summer, the EcoVet Global team will be traveling to Tanzania to assist the FOECOE team and regional partners in running a One Health Specialization workshop for the women. The workshop will form the building blocks to transform training into real-world outputs. In this training module, the women will acquire more in-depth knowledge and skills in one of four key areas: biodiversity protection and human-wildlife conflict mitigation; water conservation and health; soil health and eco-agriculture; and biosecurity and zoonotic risk prevention. This workshop will lay the foundation for creating a network of women’s One Health hubs, dubbed “Wonder Hubs.” We are excited for what the upcoming year will bring for these women. We will continue to provide you with updates on news, fundraisers, and project milestones.

As always, thank you for your support!

Warmly,

Kate & The Ecovet Global Team