Youth Trained to be Environmentally Sensitive through Confirmation Classes: Experience from Northern Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania

Abstract

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.