Browsing by Author "Mlaki, D. A."

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Community perception on the environmental conservation approach adopted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Northern Diocese, Tanzania
(EAJSSH, 2020-05-22) Mlaki, D. A.; Massawe, F. A.
Abstract: Faith based institutions have the authority and ability to address several issues and being accepted and acted upon by the people of different beliefs, especially by linking with the people’s respective faiths. This could be fully utilized in addressing environmental issues, which is one of the most currently debatable global concerns. Given the environmental degradation challenges facing Kilimanjaro region, the Northern Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania started an intervention on tree planting by involving youth enrolled in confirmation classes as a way of promoting environmental conservation behaviour among youths. Since the tree planting programme operate within the community, this study therefore was conducted to explore the way the community perceive this programme, which will determine their participation therein, and success of the programme. A cross-sectional research design was adopted and a random sample of 100 households that had registered their children for confirmation classes in different years from 2003 to 2015 were involved. A Structured questionnaire with Likert scale was used to capture perceptions of households complimented by Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews. The descriptive and content analysis was adopted. The findings revealed that about 85% of the households had positive perception about the innovative approach adopted by the church. Furthermore, the community members see the programme as part of their household responsibilities and a good approach through which the nature can regain its lost form and provide to them what had been lost. The findings confirm the argument under the theory of self-determination of environmental behavior since despite being the church intervention people perform a tree planting behaviour for their own sake and to gain positive results. In this case, youths got involved in the program so as to graduate from confirmation training while avoiding the negative outcomes that is failure to be confirmed.
Youth Trained to be Environmentally Sensitive through Confirmation Classes: Experience from Northern Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania
(Tengeru Community Development Journal, 2019) Mlaki, D. A.; Massawe, F. A.
Religion institutions forward the conservation of natural biodiversity by providing ethical and social models for living respectfully with nature. Given this acknowledgment, Northern Diocese(ND) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCT) in Kilimanjaro region started an intervention on tree planting through engaging confirmation students who are enrolled to the classes every year. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was conducted to examine success and challenges of the approach. Specifically, the study established the survival rate of trees and presents opinion on factors facilitated the success of the approach. The descriptive analysis was adopted in establishing the rate of survived trees and opinion associated with its survival. The findings reveal that, 78% of all trees planted by students survived. Generally, despite various factors reported to contribute to high rate of tree survival, spiritual influence was cited as strong factor. It was found that even if a tree seedling given to a child died, most of them found any means to replace the seedling by either taking the ones that grew around their environment, from friend’s fields, or even asking for some money from their parents. Factors like livestock grazing,theft, drought, and negligence were cited as challenges for the success of the project. The study concludes that the mode of engaging youth in tree planting program to be successful since the youth attribute tree planting to faith, leading to changing people’s behaviour on environmental conservation. It is recommended that the mode should be up scaled to other areas in Tanzania and also to other faith groups.