One Trip One Tree: Saving Rau Forest

I met Daniel in 2018 while undertaking academic research, with Rau Eco and Cultural Tourism as a case study into Social Enterprise as an Agent of Change. I interviewed Daniel, his team, members of the community and several other young Tanzanian men and women who, inspired by Daniel, had subsequently set up similar enterprises in other parts of Tanzania. After graduating, rather than taking the classic path of becoming government employees, Daniel and collegues, Linus Lasway and Hamis Yusuph set up their eco tourism enterprise focused on the Rau Forest Reserve outside Moshi, in Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro region.

The forest is fragile, home to indigenous African tree species and facing erosion due to an expanding Moshi, dumping and extraction of wood for firewood and other purposes. They established the enterprise in 2014 and in the early lean years developed a portfolio of activities including their \"one trip one tree\" hands on conservation programme, aiming to plant 1,000.000 trees by 2030. They coll