BUSY YOUTH ORGANIZATION

A project in which youth will be mobilized to engage in reforestation program where they will open private forest using fast growing trees like pine for a long run business. 

This is a project/solution which we are using youth groups to establishing tree forests in their respective communities by using fast growing and maturing trees. Unlike most companies or organizations doing tree planting , our initiative will not only conserve nature or mitigate the impact of climate-change but it will also be generating income for youth in a long run.  They already embraced the idea and we planning to conduct a climate Change sensitization in youth communities where we will ask for pieces of community land from the traditional leaders. We will carry out training workshops on forest management. We will provide the groups with seedlings, simple handy tools which will replace heavy forest machinery and general forest guide book. All this will run in 1year but forest management will continue until trees are ready which is from 2 to 4 years to come. Then we will find companies and individual customers who will be offered fair prices. We are using mobile phones and WhatsApp application as our main communication channel to minimize the contact time, as one of the Covid-19 pandemic prevention  measure. All form of meeting are done through whatsApp through  visual-audio conference calls. 

Blantyre is Malawi's second largest city, with over 1 million inhabitants. It is also the country's financial and commercial centre. It is surrounded by 4 steep hill sides. However the large surfaces of the hill side has been cleared in recent years for construction, fuel, and agriculture use. Deforestation has removed the natural barriers to flooding that once surrounded the city. According to Tamani Nkhono Mvula the executive director of Malawi's Civil Society Agriculture-network(CISANET) "The level of deforestation has contributed to the increase level impact of disaster". This has led to the flooding all over the country and particularly in Ndirande township of Blantyre in recent years. Blantyre being a commercial city is also subjected too much production of green house gases. According to Aaron O'Neill (2021) “The statistic shows the youth unemployment rate in Malawi from 1999-2019. According to the source, the data are ILO estimates. In 2019, the estimated youth unemployment rate in Malawi was at 7.4 percent. FANTAH Project is trying to solve youth unemployment and the impacts of deforestation like floods that has attacked the Blantyre in recent years through reforestation by establishing  private forests.

The impact is serving directly the youth who are/will taking part in the project  by creating jobs/businesses  through forest establishment which later will be harvested sustainably for sale. The involved youth will also benefit from our capacity building programs during our training workshop in forest management and climate change. These targeted youth are underserved due to their unemployment condition which leaves them vulnerable to immoral behaviours in the process of trying to survive.

The whole city will also benefit from the reforestation program through the minimization of natural disasters like floods or drought. The forest will also act as climate change mitigation by providing the city with renewable resources, improved rainfalls, reduction greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hence reducing the incidents of global warming. 

As a youth led organization, one of our missions is designing programs that help fellow youth out there. Before we indulge in every project we do a simple research on how the project is relevant to the target audience and how the audience accept the project. We do this through stakeholder meetings and audience representative one on one interview.

We did the same in this project.

In our first phase we mobilized 5 youth groups from Blantyre. Through them we managed to plant 39 thousand trees in 13 different locations. We also managed to open 5 nursery sites that has produced more than 100 thousand seedlings. It is with this seedlings that we have taken the initiative of this project of mobilizing another set of youth groups but this time around using the business approach. So far we have already identified the 10 groups who have already embraced the idea. We are now close to training them to start the forest establishment process.

Our project is using existing technology which is a mobile phone and an WhatsApp application. This is a technology that will form the basis of our communication between our organization and the youth groups involved. With the growing and recurrence of Covid-19 pandemic, we thought of continuing our project but this time with minimum contact time to reduce the spread of the virus. The only time we will be meeting is in the planting phase and seedlings transportation stage to the planting site. As such all communication including meetings will be done on WhatsApp group/conference call either visual or audio.

This year we are engaging 10 youth groups with the average of 30 in each group making our target number this year at 300 youth.

Next year we are planning to double the number of youth groups. Which means we will target close to 20 youth groups with the same average number of members  in each group(30) making our target youth next year 600 youth in total.

• Planting at least 85% of the trees in Blantyre rural by youth groups themselves. This will be achieved by thorough youth sensitization, mobilization and trainings.
• Communities Increased awareness of negative environmental impact of climate Change. This will be achieved through youth engagement with their communities after being equipped with necessary information about tree management and climate change through our trainings.
• Involving at least 20% vulnerable youth in the project planning to implementation. One of the criteria of picking the youth groups for the project will be the inclusion of most vulnerable youth in there mist. 
•Reduce youth related crime rates in the implementation communities by 15%. This will be achieved by keeping the youth busy with opening their forest and and continuance management. As the saying goes “an idle mind is the devils workshop”.

In order to measure progress we set aside indicators that we used to track the project impact. We use the following indicators.

1. Total number of available seedlings before the exercise and total number planted by the youth.

2. Number of youth groups participating and the total number of youth involved.

3. Number of vulnerable youth in each youth group ( for example those living with HIV and AIDS, disabled and girls) and the total number of vulnerable youth involved.

4. Implementation communities knowledge on climate change and environmental topics.

5.Total number of youth related crimes per year.

1.The very first thing which may go wrong is lack of enough moisture(,water) to sustain the growing trees.

2. Second thing which may go wrong is luck of participation by the community leaders and the community at large in the project implementation 

3. The third  thing which may go wrong in this project is the depletion of funds before the end of the project.

4. The last thing which may go wrong where by compromising the whole initiative is unwillingness of the authorities to help when the need arises, like the District council department and the community leaders themselves.
 

My team is made up of qualified staff with vast experience in project implementation because they have been working in this youth led non profit organization since 2014. Our 2 field officers are graduates in Community development and they have been there since 2014. Our Project and Health Manager is a graduate in Nursing and Midwifery, Project management and Environmental health and he has been there since 2017. We have a qualified accountant, an administrator and an environmental officers who has been with the organization for more than 3years.

Over the years we have partnered with 3 organizations in different projects. Organizations like Addiv consultants, Save the Poor Foundation and the Malawi government under Youth district office. But we do not have a partner for this project currently.

Our project is targeting youth which includes girls. So this initiative is also directly impacting girls.

Our team will use the prize to increase the engagement of girls in this project by inviting, opening and strengthening girls groups to take part in this project to increase their productivity.

Most of our programs engage the community directly and benefits its members. We have so far run projects like , “Hip hop and HIV” project where we used hip hop music to disseminate HIV related informations. We also had “Knowing a Girl Child” project which aimed at keeping girls in schools by removing social cultural barriers like discriminations and inequalities and any type of abuses. 

Our organization will use the award prize to advance the community social, economical and health development and beyond. We will engage programs that address the felt needs of communities we represent and beyond.