MRADI WA KULETA MAGEUZI KATIKA SEKTA YA MKAA TANZANIA TTCS WABADILISHA VIJANA KUTOKA UCHOMAJI MKAA HARAMU MPAKA KUWA KAMPUNI YA BOSS KUKU

Posted on: September 9th, 2020

Mlilingwa Village  is endowed with forest resources. In the past, , illegal activities in the forest including charcoal making was  dominant practice and thus threatened the existence of the forest. The TTCS project intervened with introduction of participatory forest management  and trained villagers on sustainable charcoal production techniques. Mr. Balati Latilali Patel commonly known as “Zungu was one of illegal charcoal makers who attended the training. Mr “Zungu” said “I attended the training together with my 12 friends. We were trained on how to prepare charcoal sustainably, after the training we started making charcoal using the methods that we learned. We agreed every month to contribute 10,000 as our saving. After saving for one year we accumulated a total of 1,200,000. With this money,we decided to change the business to poultry keeping where we established our group which is known as “Boss Kuku”. We built a chicken yard to accommodate 300 chicks. We bought 300 chicks at a price of Tshs 1,500/= each.  Through selling chicken and associated products such as eggs and chicken fertilizers, we managed to build another yard which has the capacity to accommodate 1000 chicken which costed us Tshs 16,000,000/=. After constructing the new chicken yard we decided to buy an incubator at a cost of Tshs 1,500,000. This incubator has made our rearing to be cost effective as we produce the chicks ourselves. We are now selling chicken, eggs and fertilizers. The price for chicken ranges between 15,000/= to 20000/= depending on the size of the chicken. With 1000 chickens we are getting between Tshs 15-20 million in every six months. There is no doubt that if it were not the TTCS project, we would not have made it this far.  Boss Kuku Group has shown the way on how the change of mind set can transform someone’s livelihood and we no longer engage in illegal charcoal”.