I am Susan Chege Reuben, a woman in conservation technology (WiCT), 2023 Tanzania cohort. Soon after I gained the training of WiCT, I was totally transformed into a visionary leader. I went back to the community and apply what I learned and used the fund provided by Arm to initiate a small project which aims at creating future champions leaders, who are skilled in technology and thus will use those skills to prosper conservation.

REI (Restorers Environmental Initiative) is a name given to this project. The activities which are delivered by REI includes; Youth Environmental Education, use of tech tools in conservation, tree planting and OceanSafe  campaigns. My focus was to the Children aged 14 and below, starting with three schools found in Mwanga district in Kilimanjaro region, Tanzania. I decided to choose Kilimanjaro because it is the home of the highest mountain in the world, and Mwanga specifically is the biodiversity hotspot where a portion of Eastern Arc Mountain passes as well as home of significant lakes that is Lake Jipe and Nyumba ya Mungu Dam.

With REI, we are using Kobo to report for; development and growth of the seedlings provided where we give the online forms to environmental teachers to teach the students on the reporting with Kobo, the students are the one collecting the data on weekly basis. Also, reporting on the threats which faces water bodies of which only Nyumba ya Mungu Dam have been taken to account. The other activity, is classroom and outdoor sessions where students learn about wildlife conservation, technology, career & leadership.

You can imagine how beautifully it is and so big work, but we are a team of two women and three environmental teachers plus the peer mentors. After, I was empowered through WiCT, I wanted to be a mentor too, so I started mentoring other women and young people. Sesilia Nawese (The woman in the background image) is one among my mentee.  She holds a bachelor degree in Environmental studies but not yet employed, therefore through REI we have been together helping other Youth in the environmental conservation. Of course, we do not have enough fund but we are investing in knowledge and the future is really promising. Sesilia helps me with follow ups, and some classrooms sessions as currently I am working with an Organization called African People and Wildlife as a Youth Environmental Education and Girls Club program Officer, I love working with Youth.

Challenges are common, so the big challenges we face is insufficient funds to procure tools and equipment's, some airtime to facilitate sending the kobo forms to our hub, time factor and livestock raid our seedlings. As mentioned earlier, the future is promising, we are still writing proposal for fundraising and networking platforms as wildlabs still be our panacea. We look foward to expand more of  our activities in Jipe ward where Lake Jipe is found to cater for aquatic weed invading the Lake and the human-Elephant conflicts around the Mwanga district. We also want to create strong bonds with the government local institutions to strive together on this matter.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge  and appreciate the seed grant from Arm, the workshops and mentorship from Wildlabs.net, Fauna & Flora International, RISE, and GrumetFund, my colleagues in the WiCT cohort and all other people who their peace of advise has made us reach this far. You are amazing, and doing  a great job!!!