Mobile school for Sandawe agro-pastoralists

The Sandawe people are one of the world's oldest tribes. For thousands of years, the Sandawe have lived as hunter-gatherers in a small rural area in the middle of Tanzania. To survive in the East African steppe, the Sandawe have recently taken up livestock-farming and agriculture. However, productivity is low because they lack the essential knowledge of raising animals and growing crops. Young Sandawe often do not see any prospects and move to urban surroundings as day labourers.

To counteract this development, Veterinarians without Borders is running a vocational training centre for livestock-farming and agriculture in co-operation with the local organisation UMAKWA. We want to give the Sandawe a good basic agricultural knowledge, to open up new perspectives especially for young people and to sustainably improve the situation of their livestock. The focus of this training centre is:

• Training of community animal health workers (CAHWs)
• Training of village-based agriculture advisors (VBAs)
• Training of good agriculture practices and good husbandry practices (GAP and GHP)
• Bee keeping and honey harvesting

A further objective of the training is to raise the participants' awareness of social and health issues and to provide basic economic skills.