Mugini Jacob, VoicesofAfrica mobile reporter in the Mara region, Tanzania
A group of widows in northern Tanzania has embarked on poultry keeping project in Rorya District with the support of World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The project seeks to boost income of the women and eventual enable them to have a decent life if all goes well.
The group chairperson Mrs Winfrida Ngaji thanks WWF for supporting the project, predicting that it help to improve their living conditions.
‘Our lives have been very difficult and that is why we have formed a group to start this project. What we are now crying for is poultry keeping skills on how to run this project’, she says.
A local officer with WWF Mrs Praxeda Majiwa says in the past the women had been engaging on economic generating activities that used to pollute Mara River which flows into Lake Victoria on the Tanzanian side.
She cites unsustainable horticultural farming across the shore of the river as the major activity that the women had been undertaking in order to earn their living.
‘We are helping them in order to conserve environment of Mara River and Lake Victoria. This is an alternative source of income and by so doing we are reducing environmental pressure in the area’, Mrs Majiwa who says.
WWF supports community initiated conservation activities in several villages adjacent Mara River basin in Tanzania and Kenya.