Training 750 People Is Not a Project Output — It Is the Point

In conservation, training is often treated as a box to tick. You hold workshops, count the participants, write the number in your donor report, and move on. We have always believed that approach is wrong — and our experience working with coastal communities in Dar es Salaam and Mtwara has reinforced that belief.

Between 2022 and early 2025, under the USAID-funded Heshimu Bahari programme, we worked across 84 Beach Management Units and 17 community fisheries management areas to deliver a comprehensive community capacity building programme. More than 750 people went through training — fishers, women's group members, local leaders, and marine resource managers.

But the number is not what we are most proud of. What we are proud of is what the training covered and how it was designed.

We ran six training areas — sustainable use of coastal and marine resources, climate resilience and adaptation, leadership and co-management, inclusion and gender, gender-based violence awareness, and socio-economic development. Each was designed not as a lecture but as a practical conversation. We used local language, real local examples, and methods that respected what community members already knew.

We also did something that many training programmes skip entirely — we looked at the economics. We assessed which community groups were ready to connect with financial institutions, and we actively brokered those connections. In Dar es Salaam, five groups were linked to potential financial partners. In Mtwara, two more followed. These communities were not just learning about conservation — they were being connected to the resources they needed to make conservation sustainable for themselves.

The programme was stopped in February 2025 following the global USAID funding suspension — not because of any failure in delivery. The communities we worked with continue to apply what they learned. That is exactly what good training is supposed to do.