Empowerment, Justice and Stewardship
UCRT works to empower marginalised people in the rangelands of northern Tanzania to secure rights to their natural resources and land in order to improve their livelihoods and ability to conserve their resources. UCRT aims to promote more resilient, egalitarian and sustainable communities that are responsible for their own development, and better able to benefit from and steward their environment for future generations. UCRT also works with these communities to expand their ability to ensure that national policy and legal processes underpin their rights and development needs.
UCRT works with the full involvement of local communities to develop strategies for long-term sustainable management and wise use of land and natural resources. We believe that all members of a community deserve an equal right to participate and make decisions regarding community affairs, and that decisions should not be undermined by elite or vested interests. To achieve this vision, UCRT has developed strong and close relationships with the communities we work in.
All our staff are members of the communities in which they work: this means they understand and are highly effective in working with their communities to address locally complex natural resource management issues. Unlike many NGOs, communities ask for UCRT’s support and not the other way around.
UCRT has supported and empowered the local communities it works with to:
UCRT works with the full involvement of local communities to develop strategies for long-term sustainable management and wise use of land and natural resources. We believe that all members of a community deserve an equal right to participate and make decisions regarding community affairs, and that decisions should not be undermined by elite or vested interests. To achieve this vision, UCRT has developed strong and close relationships with the communities we work in.
All our staff are members of the communities in which they work: this means they understand and are highly effective in working with their communities to address locally complex natural resource management issues. Unlike many NGOs, communities ask for UCRT’s support and not the other way around.
UCRT has supported and empowered the local communities it works with to:
- Secure certificates (rights) to their village lands
- Develop and implement better local resource management plans, based on customary practices
- Achieve the resolution of long-standing local conflicts over land and natural resources
- Partner with the private sector to generate revenues that have helped transform their access to education and health services
- Create the first land easement in Tanzania to safeguard critical wildlife areas on community land: the number of easements has since grown in number
- Reinvigorate and enable customary leadership institutions to address key societal issues (such as women’s rights) and build inter-community cohesion and cooperation
- Pioneer a legally innovative way of enabling a hunter-gatherer community safeguard its occupancy of their remaining land
- Promote community land and natural resource interests in Tanzania’s constitutional reform process.
Copyright 2012 Ujamaa Community Resource Team - All Rights Reserved
