Donations

Since 2003 TESFA has been developing CbT - community-based tourism on a small scale in Meket Woreda, near Lalibela. Now there is an URGENT need to expand the work to other places.

Why now?

On Abuna Yoseph there are a few remaining Ethiopian Wolves - a highly endangered animal. They are an intrinsic part of the Afro-Alpine environment which itself is rare and endangered. Without an intervention that gives the surrounding communities an economic reason to conserve this fragile environment, the wolves will die out. To TESFA this is a challenge we must meet, and epitomises the link between conserving environments and providing communities with meaningful incomes.

Elsewhere in Ethiopia tourism is booming. Numbers may be small by comparison with neighbouring countries but year on year the number of guests is increasing. A few well placed individuals are able to capitalise on this boom and Ethiopia's vast untapped potential, but the majority of the population stands by and watches the tourist vehicles pass by their communities without seeing any benefit. Above all TESFA need to show that the success in Meket is not a one off, but that the CbT model that is being developed can be adapted to work for communities across the country.

Unfortunately this development model does not fit into the agendas of the big donors in Ethiopia, and as a result TESFA needs the assistance of individual supporters to expand the CbT model.

Expansion plans:

Primarily TESFA needs to focus on continuing to develop the Meket sites. Meket woreda needs at least six sites and possibly eight before TESFA feels able to end site development in Meket. The sites need to interconnect with planned sites in neighbouring areas to make a continuous chain of sites with trekking in between. So far TESFA has developed four sites, and there is potentially money from Save the Children UK for a fifth.

TESFA needs to begin work in the neighbouring woredas of Gidan and Lasta (Lalibela's woreda) which would enable work to move to Abuna Yoseph and mechanisms for conserving the environment and the wolves to be developed with the communities.

In addition TESFA is looking to start a new project in a new part of Ethiopia. Ideas, plans and proposals exist to work in Wof Washa forest near Debre Berhan (see Newsletter Vol2), in a forest near Ambo (Chilimo), and ideas have been discussed for working in SNNPR (South Omo and Konso) and Eastern Tigray. There are also possibilities to extend the work from North Wollo (Meket) into South Wollo with the sites of Gishen Mariam and Mekdella, and to the Abay (Blue Nile) river and Tisabay (Blue Nile Falls).

Donations can be made in Ethiopia directly to TESFA- for details please contact chapman@ethionet.et (copy to tesfacbt@ethionet.et).

All contributions will be acknowledged, and all will go towards extending TESFAs work - currently in Meket and on Abuna Yoseph.

While in stock TESFA will send one of the special Ethiopian Millennium Calendars to all who contribute to TESFA's programme. (See Millenium page).

Thank you in advance for supporting our work and the communities with whom we work.

Wof Washa Forest in North Shoa. Slow growing Juniper trees are cut down and extacted for firewood. Most of the cut trees are left to rot in the depth of the forest. Without communities being given an economic incentive to maintain the forest, the destruction for firewood, clearing for farm land and 'poaching' of quality timber for furniture will only increase.