The Mpingo Conservation Project : Raising Awareness

We are involved in awareness raising at 3 different levels.

Local

We are working at the village level to increase awareness of forest conservation in general, and the uses of mpingo in particular. The price currently paid by loggers to extract mpingo and other valuable timber species from village lands is often a fraction of its true worth. We are educating villagers about its real value so that they can demand an appropriate price from the loggers. We are also working along side local forestry officers to increase awareness of the various benefits to local people of a healthy forest, and what they can do to help maintain it. To assist with this we have developed a village information pack which is cheap and easy to produce, and which we have distributed in our current focus area, and in neighbouring communities.

National

Mpingo is the national tree of Tanzania and has great cultural significance to the country. Many carvings are bought and kept by Tanzanians themselves. We seek to make them aware of the plight of the tree, and thereby encourage responsible buying. In addition, by encouraging and strengthening national interest in the tree, we can reinforce government concern, and keep the issues of mpingo conservation in the forefront when policy is being developed and implemented.

In support of this we produced a 2006 wall calendar jointly with the Wildlife Conservation Society for Tanzania (WCST), which was distributed amongst their members and around Kilwa District. The calendar features photographs of the project's activities and promotes the message of sustainable exploitation of forest resources and community participation. Except for the organisation names and logos, all text is in Swahili.

International

We provide information, text and pictures for use by Fauna & Flora International in their international publicity and fund-raising, e.g. our recent project profile. This publicity is crucial in developing consumer demand for musical instruments made from sustainably-managed mpingo. In addition we launched our own publicity campaign in the UK with a celebratory dinner to mark the project's 10th birthday.

At both national and international levels we have attracted a variety of press coverage.