Media Tour

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Media Tour

Involvement of media is important for FORVAC. Through media, sustainable forest management and value chain practices can be disseminated to a wide area and a large number of people. Thus, at the end of the last year, FORVAC organized a media training and tour to increase journalists’ understanding and capacities to report on Community Based Forest Management (CBFM) and related value chain development. The tour demonstrated forest value chains that the FORVAC programme and its stakeholders have implemented.

Media professionals from TV, newspapers, and social media participated in the tour that took place in the southern regions of Tanzania. Resulting from the tour, the journalists have published a number of articles in newspapers and social media blogs and broadcasted reports through TV and YouTube.

The journalists were satisfied with the tour that included field visits to a tree nursery, natural forests (Village Land Forest Reserves), a community-owned portable sawmill, forest plantations, and bamboo handicrafts producers. One of the tour participants was Vedasto Msungu who works for ITV as Environmental Journalist. Mr. Msungu has a long experience in the field of journalism in Tanzania and abroad. Once, his work led him also to Finland. “Finland is a very good country where I paid attention especially to the roads which were in excellent condition, and transportation, in general, was working well. I also admired environmental conservation and clean tap water", he remembers. Mr. Msungu hopes that FORVAC programme would help Tanzanians to learn some applicable sustainable forestry practices from Finland.

“FORVAC has done a good work because sustainably managed forests help villages significantly”, Mr. Msungu says and continues, “but still, a lot needs to be done in the areas where FORVAC operates - people need more support.” The programme will last until July 2022, and it will continue increasing economic, social, and environmental benefits from forests and woodlands in co-operation with the programme stakeholders also involving media.