In Simonga and Sinde village, we started with our model – the ABCD method – in 2022. After having done a baseline survey and a multitude of biweekly community meetings, the communities’ core group members made a plan for their people’s development.

This region has a lot of challenges, with one of the biggest being the Human Elephant Conflicts (HEC). While in many rural areas in Africa, subsistence farming is the way to survive, the communities in this area cannot practice agriculture because of the elephants. The people need to find another source of income. As a consequence, this area has experienced a high loss of natural resources to charcoal production, illegal logging and deforestation. 

The coregroup has made the plan to start a Sustainable Organic Agriculture Initiative with Community Based Conflict Mitigation. A demonstration farm will be established, which will work towards empowering the local communities in low-cost sustainable agriculture farming techniques to enhance food and nutritional security, ensure sustainable income generation through the sale of vegetable surplus as well as contribute to conservation.

And to tackle the elephant problem, we will start with a Nature Based Beekeeping Initiative. Beehive fences will be installed at the demo farm, which will safeguard the farm. Elephants don’t like bees!

This initiative will integrate expert knowledge in beekeeping and sustainable honey production with indigenous knowledge and local techniques in order to ensure locally-led adaptation and improved livelihoods.