Sunday, June 15, 2008

JEMA-UDSM BACKGROUND

JEMA stands for Joint Environmental and Development Management actions. It has members with background of wildlife, sociology, forestry, education, law, economics, environmental engineering and development studies based at the University of Dar es salaam Tanzania.

Our Vision is to have the world where environmental problems such as deforestation, overgrazing, loss of bio-diversity, soil erosion, air and water pollution and escalating poverty are minimum. The members do believe that if action based approaches are devised by utilizing the expertise from institutions of Higher Education, and working together with local communities, the plight of these problems will be minimized.

Our mission is to provide a framework for promoting participatory community based actions in environment and natural resource management for sustainable development through multidisciplinary, collaborative and action based approaches.

We believe that the sustainable development will not be achieved unless the knowledge gap between the Universities and local communities is narrowed down into shared experiences, skills and responsibilities, particularly on sustainable utilization of natural resources.

JEMA was originally found in 1996 by a group of students of the University of Dar es salaam whose interest was to build a voluntary spirit and link the knowledge generated at the University to grassroots communities by participating in voluntary conservation efforts.

To date, JEMA is a registered public interest organization with registration number 48684 under the laws of the United Republic of Tanzania.

One of the important strength that JEMA has as opposed to other many organizations is the social capital of voluntary spirit of its staffs and members. We believe that voluntary work is the only best tool to conserve our world’s biological diversity. Every body that has life has an obligation to take immediate actions to conserve with all efforts the endangered biological diversity of our time.

JEMA has ten years experience in conservation efforts in Tanzania. JEMA has undertaken a number of schools - community conservation activities including provision of environmental education, tree planting, conducting workshops, training, debates and managing wastes as part of its voluntary outreach services.

To mention them but few;
As parts of its achievements, JEMA has received 1st prize under the Coastal Environment Award Scheme for 2002, 2004 and 2005 in Kinondoni. This scheme is part of the Tanzania Coastal Management Partnership sponsored by GreenCOM, Coastal Resources Centre and USAID.