Unsanctioned small scale gold prospecting in the communal lands since before the colonial era, has exacerbated the combined effects of climate change and dependence on local firewood for cooking and on chemical fertilisers for growing crops. The local community witnessed the sudden loss of mature trees and the pollution of essential waterways as a result of the gold panning activities of outsiders.
CREATING ECO-LEARNING LEGACY
Our vision is for a thriving, diverse and balanced ecosystem and for a return to living in partnership with the land.
Origins
Response
This experience of the erosion of tree cover and with it their hopes for the survival of future generations on these ancestral lands has prompted a small but deep rooted cultural response. Together with family members and some local food growers, Wellington Chinyere began to experiment with seed collection and propagation in the local forest area and to explore traditionally held knowledge of the biodiversity on which the communities have depended for centuries.
The Trees of Hope Project emerged from these shared restorative and regenerative actions.
Kennedy Tafara Chinyere formed a small UK based group, Trees of Hope UK (ToH UK) in 2019 and promoted through community based music, arts and activities on the east side of Dartmoor between Chagford and Bovey Tracey. This initiative gained status as a UK based Community Interest Company (ToH CIC) in 2022, providing an accountable base for raising funds and distributing proceeds to support the activities of the Trees of Hope Project. Regular transfers of monies are attempting to keep pace with the aspirations and achievements of the growing Zimbabwean based team. The narratives of this exhibition, shared through pictures and words, provide a glimpse of how, on a small plot of planet earth, the relationships between people and land are changing.
TREES
Completed in 2019, working with local communities using locally sourced materials and labour, our tree nursery in Chinyere village is now up and running.
The tree nursery represents hope for a sustainable future through reforestation and ecological restoration.
This is a protected space to nurture seedlings and begin the process of growing indigenous bushes, fruit trees and trees. These seedlings will be distributed in the local community to support and encourage the reforestation of the location that has suffered from deforestation over the last years.
LEARNING
Trees of Hope is an eco learning project that draws respectfully on knowledge, understanding and forms of action that have been developed by indigenous communities and by organisations committed to promoting biodiversity, equity and sustainability. Trees of Hope supports the development of eco-social, bio-mimic and therapeutic pedagogies that draw on a diversity of music / arts and community traditions.
Learning with Trees of Hope encourages participants to further the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It encourages shifts in self awareness and consciousness that as humans we ourselves are part of the natural world and that we need to care for it as we depend on its gifts for our survival.
PLANNING AHEAD
The Trees of Hope team are happy to confirm that good progress has been made with the Roots project initiated in 2022.
Preparations are now being made for the next phase of the work. Together we are currently discussing medium term plans that can build on the successful completion of the new shade structure that is already providing protection for young saplings and of facilities around the borehole (including toilets) to encourage further engagement of local community members.
THE BOREHOLE
Clean water is fundamental to development and wellbeing. Access to water is not only a goal in its own right but is critical to the achievement of other developmental objectives including gender equality, adequate nutrition, education and the eradication of poverty.
During the pandemic Trees of Hope UK concentrated its efforts into raising funds for a borehole ( a bush pump) that could provide sufficient water not only for the 1000s of tree saplings growing in the nursery but also for general use by the local community. £5000 were raised by June 2021.