Bishop Simon Chiwanga

LEAD Foundation – Tanzania

Retired Bishop, Simon Chiwanga from Mpwapwa in Tanzania, has been strongly committed to reforestation over a number of years. He had tried closing a hill to human interventions with a disappointing result and in 2005, with the Jitume Foundation community groups, planted two million trees but most died and the groups started to disintegrate.

After attending a Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration Workshop in Moshi, Tanzania in March and the Beating Famine Conference in Nairobi in April, his newfound understanding of FMNR rekindled his determination and he returned to Mpwapwa with renewed zeal to restore degraded farms and hills.

He learnt that forests could be regenerated using the power of the large root systems which often remain alive and have the capacity to draw water and nutrients from deep under the soil surface, after a tree is cut down.

The action started immediately. He organised training on his own farm, demonstrating how the living stumps could be found and how to prune the many shoots down to three to five so that they could grow strongly. After demonstration, each participant had the opportunity to prune regrowth.

LEAD Foundation is deeply committed to an integrated approach that treats leadership formation, environmental conservation, and action for community development as one package for the transformation of communities and their environment. In Tanzania, LEAD Foundation has been leading the Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) movement in restoring degraded landscapes particularly in the semi-arid central Tanzania.

Website: Lead Foundation

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Video 1) Bishop Chiwanga (Swahali with CC)
Video 2) Restoring dry land in Tanzania