WADEC Visit

This morning, we visited Women in Agriculture Development and Environmental Conservation (WADEC). We met with three of WADEC's six workers, Helen, the director, and Teresa and Angel, two field workers. They were very kind and so excited about our projects. They fed us some wonderful bread and tea after a wonderful discussion about what WADEC does, what DHE does, and what potential exists for partnership in the future.

We learned that WADEC has a number of initiatives to address its vision to have a community that is technically and economically empowered through equitable utilization of natural resource basis sustainable rural development. Some of these initiatives are agriculture development and environmental protection, women economic empowerment, research training and consulting, reproductive health, human rights and gender development, and other ongoing projects.WADEC is headed by women only and sees the base of development in Tanzania to be with women. The NGO works with various groups including women's groups, youth groups, farmers groups, and economic development groups to address the issues in various communities. WADEC works with many other organizations, both non-governmental and governmental. These collaborators help connect villages and WADEC so that WADEC can help the village address their concerns. 

We see great potential partnership with WADEC as an organization that can help us connect with user groups for our technologies. WADEC was particularly interested in the briquetting project. The stove, they said, is less versatile than briquetting and does not quite fit the user groups they work with. They did suggest that the specifics of cooking Tanzanian meals needs to be determined and explained for user groups when distributing the stove. Briquetting, however, can be used by the wide variety of villages as a means to reduce environmental degradation from cutting down trees, improve health by reducing smoke inhaled, and aiding in economic development by saving families money and creating jobs. WADEC would like the group to return in the summer to work with WADEC for a few days to begin a pilot program or two in various villages the organization works with. We agreed that this might be a great opportunity for both groups and hope that the summer trip can join WADEC for a few days to demonstrate the briquette press, show how to burn briquettes, and do a preliminary training so that community members can begin to develop their own briquette mixtures that might be successful. DHE can work with user groups with WADEC for more extensive implementation when we are ready.

Overall, WADEC seemed very excited to work with DHE and we see a strong potential partnership in the future.