Youth Environmental Education in Tanzania

We at Earth Rising are proud to support Tanzania Youth Environmental Network (TAYEN) in their environmental education and social justice work. TAYEN is a youth-led NGO with a mission to inspire, educate, and engage youth in solving Tanzania's most pressing environmental problems through community action projects.

In the past year TAYEN has scaled up their work and engaged more youth in their programs through several different initiatives. First, TAYEN prepared an intensive Climate Change Training program based on youth participant’s scores on a climate change awareness pre-test. While the pre-test results suggested that only 15% of youths were aware of basic climate change concepts, by the end of the program over 98% of youth participants were aware of topics such as climate change mitigation, adaptation, resilience, climate justice and their role in achieving these concepts.  

Beyond education on these crucial concepts, youth participants were also trained on tree planting including specific skills such as how to prepare sites and soil for proper planting of seedlings as well as educating on how best to care for and maintain a planted area. Through this project, the village council provided one hectare of land to support the cultivation of fruit trees. This will allow for the generation of income for youth participants and also contribute to climate change mitigation. So far the project has resulted in 5,000 trees being planted 

Similarly, youth participants were also trained on bee keeping. Again, beyond receiving practical training on how to care for beehives, youths were also taught the business side of operations and how to generate income from this work. Participants were provided with 50 beehives to support their work and from this 50 youth participants have found green jobs such as beekeeping. Another 15 youths have found jobs in tree nursery development.  

In all, TAYEN’s work shows the power of environmental education to empower youths to contribute to climate change mitigation and the dual benefits such activities can have on rural communities. In the words of youth participant Ibrahim Faraji Chambilio “ We did not have any knowledge or awareness of climate change and justice before, but now we know about climate change and justice, and we hope to takemore action by providing awareness to our fellow students in the village.” 

Earth Rising is proud to support TAYEN in all their work and excited to see the impact of their efforts in the years to come. 

To learn more about TAYEN visit their website: https://tayentz.wixsite.com/site