General

The Project will be implemented in a period of 18 months starting from April 2018 with focusing its activities on NAA East Zone Cooperation and advocacy for indigenous community socio cultural rights and forest based sustainable livelihood in collaboration with the following NAA East Zone partners: Adivasi Samta Manch, DISHA, Parivartan (Chhattisgarh), Paribartan (Odisha), Natya Chetana, Devote Trust, and DHARITRI. The main focus will be given on the follow-up of implementation of CFR (Community Forest Righ ts/Resources) under FRA (Forest Rights Act) till all the villages have got their community forest rights over Community Forest Resources including rights over the shifting cultivation area where Kutia, Baiga and other primitive Adivasis are practicing sin ce long time. Zonal initiative will ensure the CFR area with community forest boundary is properly identified and accepted by the community. It will ensure that 50 operational village of four States community has developed their CFR management and converge nce action plan. It will also develop Bio-protocol document of 50 villages in four States. NAA East Zone member organisations will give more priority on the capacity building of 800 community leaders (directly) and indirectly 10000 leaders including women, youth and traditional leaders for the sustenance of the program. Apart from these, it will also give importance on the Exchange dialogue process among Adivasi of NAA East Zone to find some solutions to their issues and challenges including strengthening t he socio-cultural and economic situation. Along with this, project will focus on the establishment of good relationship among the different Adibasis communities of other areas and mutual learning of good traditional practices for their better life and live lihood. It will also organise a Cultural Campaign for Advocating and supporting rights on forest, land and water and managing FRA-CFR in three States (Odisha and Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand) of East Zone starting from Bhubaneswar (Odisha) and ending at Ranc hi (Jharkhand). It will also ensure the visibility of NAA and spreading message of NAA in three States, highlighting the issue through media advocacy during the campaign. It will also create space in the National level through AIFFRS network to advocacy o n the FRA-CFR and Forest Governance issue to get the solidarity from the other groups and to bring policy level changes on this issue.

General

The overall aim of this project is to support communities to perform proactive and sustained participatory forest management that is fair adaptive and resilient to change thus maximizing the long-term positive outcomes for local people and the environment. The specific objectives include: Train and supervise three communities to undertake practical forest management through early burning-which increases forest productivity and reduces loss; Work with communities and district authorities to adapt three VLFRs to overcome land disputes and identify novel ways to safeguard them against future encroachment; and Provide training in three communities to improve VLFR governance and local capacity to effectively and transparently manage forest based income.Expected o utcomes and activities to be implemented under each outcome are: Communities are actively managing forests which are more productive as a result;- fire management training Practical early burning and Burned area monitored Participatory forest management i s adapted to mitigate land disputes and encroachment- Resurveying VLFR boundaries Negotiating revenue sharing with neighbouring communities Better community - level natural resource governance and accountability:- training on leadership and accountability Training on financial record keepingThe project will be implemented in four forest dependent rural communities in Kilwa District: Nanjirinji A with a population of 5 130 Likawage with a population of 5 994 Kikole with a population of 1 395 and Kisangi with a population of 924. thus the activities mentioned above are likely to benefit more than 15 000 rural Tanzanian.