Unverified non-profit organisation

The Environmental Foundation for Development is committed to providing a platform to carry out and promote both environmental improvement and practical conservation. We aim to educate, encourage and support local populations in environmental practice by working with statutory and non-statutory agencies.
EFD strives to fight poverty, global warming and environmental degradation in rural and urban areas. We aim to promote the health and well-being of residents, working together regardless of age, ethnicity, ability, sex, belief or political affiliation, recognizing the value of our many differences.
The main objective of the organization is to support communities’ initiatives to tackle their own economic, social and environmental problems. Specifically, EFD works towards:
1. Community empowerment in terms of organization
2. Improved health and availability of safe and sustainable water
3. Providing education on beneficial environmental protection
4. Increasing household income and economic activity by providing entrepreneurship skills
5. Promoting community sensitization for the improvement of environmental and practical conservations.
6. Reducing malnutrition and food insecurity that cause irreparable damage to livelihoods, thereby reducing self-sufficiency through introducing sustainable food security and livelihood improvement initiatives.
7. Improving the protection of and respect for the human rights and dignity of vulnerable populations – with a special focus on IDPs, women, children and marginalized groups – through effective advocacy and the application of a rights-based approach across all sectors
8. Building the capacity of local CBOs, women groups, youth groups in better management practices, service deliveries etc.
9. Enhancing education and skills training access to youth and adults, promoting employment opportunities.
10. Enhancing peace building, human rights and democracy promotion
11. Promoting and advocating gender sensitive approaches to enhance women’s rights and girl’s education, strengthening the participation and involvement of women and vulnerable groups in programs and organizations.

Website

https://www.facebook.com/VolunteerOpportunitiesTanzaniaTZ/

Year established

2014

Organisation annual cash turnover (in US$ equivalent)

Less than 500,000

Participant in relevant networks

Environmental Sanitation: In order to ensure long lasting health benefits brought by improved water supply, environmental sanitation is part and parcel of domestic water supply. EFD supports designing and construction of household and institutional latrines where EFD promotes different types of sanitary facilities suitable for rural/urban areas. It also provides health, hygiene and sanitation education to the community. EFD cheap in from council strategic plan and work hand in hand with Community members to address community needs. However in project design EFD work in collaboration with local administration (District councils) in the designing of interventions and plan implementations as well as monitoring and evaluation process. EFD also aims to trains village animator’s hygiene friends who promotes hygiene and sanitation and Masons on improved latrine construction. It uses sanitation social marketing tools and community participatory approaches through an approach known as Mtumba with special focus on the most needy and excluded such as people with disabilities, children, elderly, and vulnerable poor. Participatory methods that make beneficiaries become major players in the project activities and ensure long-term sustainability of the project. EFD provide services in terms of capacity building, auditing, financial and market information to beneficiaries and the community at large. Efforts to ensure that the community owns the projects are made to sustain the long-term results/impact of the project. As a strategy to improve livelihood, sanitation artisans and field animators are always to mobilized and capacitated to establish a saving and Credit Cooperative Society (SACCOS) that can help Artisan access capital in running latrine construction business. The establishment of SACCOS promote saving culture to sanitation artisans whereby ten percent of the proceeds from latrine constructions are be deposited to SACCOS. The SACCOS also act as a rural financial institution to offer financial services such as micro-credits, payment transfer and savings to animators, sanitation artisans and beneficiaries in general. As a financial services provider, SACCOS improve the livelihood of its beneficiaries even after the project has phased out. Education and Training on Health (hygiene), Sanitation in relation to the supply of reliable, clean and safe water to community owned resources. EFD aims at trains community members and volunteers in the basic hygiene messages and assists them in working plans for health education in the community. The volunteers will conduct educational sessions with women groups, make home visits, organize hygiene-related community action (e.g. cleaning around water points) and demonstrate through their own day-to-day behavior on the new hygienic practices. Working as a team gives the volunteers the confidence and credibility needed to call community meetings, organize community action, and make household visits. They use participatory techniques emphasizing learning through doing, discussions, peer group interactions, demonstration and visual reinforcement. Community are encouraged to identify and analyze health problems and look for their own solutions and ways to meet these goals. Training materials, principally flipchart, booklets and picture stories will be provided by EFD. SWASH Programme School Water supply, sanitation and hygiene play a key role in schools. Schools that do not have such services present a number of risks to pupils, including risk of contracting diseases associated with poor sanitation, lost school days due to illness or for girls while menstruating, contributing to poor pupils school performance and increase household economic burden. EFD in collaboration with LGAs with support from different donors aim to implementing School water, Hygiene and Sanitation Project to improve WASH services in primary schools. The projects will help to improve access to WASH services to most vulnerable primary schools. Urban water supply and Solid Waste Management Project EFD aims to implementing up a program of work on Waste and water resources management which aims to support semi urban communities to manage risks and threats to their water supplies and solid waste disposal. The main goal of this intervention is to capacitate Water and Sanitation authorities in emerging rural towns to have a formal solid waste management-collection system managed by them, improve management capability and increase revenue collections from water use and enhance integrated water resource management to catchment areas. The interventions goal is to ensure access to clean and safe water to urban areas. Income Generation: EFD aims at consolidating the rural society in its complicity to constantly play an active role for its betterment in changing overall socio-economic environment. EFD facilitates the formation and establishment of Income Generating groups and Community Based Organizations (CBOs). Also trains group leaders and other members and facilitates the communication of information between groups by organizing visits and training of these groups for sustainable group growth and strong maturity. The above experiences for which EFD gained through implementations of integrated communities development project in rural areas of Singida region and Tanzania at large, resulting to the need to enhance integrated social economic intervention in which basic education, vocational skills training, and engagement of communities members to run their own microfinance for improved livelihood of the pro poor communities in rural areas. EFD also aim to works on Community Managed Microfinance which is believed to be community owned initiatives toward sustainable livelihood of the rural poor, and has Participatory implementation mechanism (Own fund, local management and monitoring, bring sense of ownership). It is a Self-help process by community members, participatory in nature and highly Bottom-up approach. EFD ensure effective community participation in the whole or overall process during project implementation to address the challenges of extreme poverty by empowering rural poor communities to raise their income, through adoptive Income Generating Activities, within their local economy. EFD also aim to work on Community Based Vocational training at community level. The aim is to increase access enrollment of rural youth in the involvement income generating activities such as agricultural activities, livestock keeping and bee keeping. Lack of skills on how they can add value in their product and how they can produce for more profit is a limiting factor to the improvement of their small enterprises established. Failure of youth to establish income generating activities expose them to immoral behavior such as using drugs, unsafe sexual relationship, robbery, pick pocketing and other which result to death and extremely poverty. Lack of outreach programmes to the present established vacation training centers had resulted to lack of skills to youth and women in rural areas and mostly this is due to lack of fund to support outreach programme. The main challenges in Vocational Training includes Low income per capital to most youth due to lack of income generating skills due to fact that many student when they finish their standard seven class they don’t have any skills and their parent don’t have money which can be used to send them in public and private vocational center with higher costs and therefore denying youth access to Vocational training. Low enrollment of girls and disabled people in formal vocational centers due to fact that most of courses which are taught are seems to fit male than women and this result to many vacation centers to be dominated by boys. Low government support in the community based vocational skills training had resulted to creating unskilled youth with lack of knowledge exposing them to more poverty vulnerability factors.