Community perception on the environmental conservation approach adopted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Northern Diocese, Tanzania

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Date

2020-05-22

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

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Publisher

EAJSSH

Abstract

Abstract: Faith based institutions have the authority and ability to address several issues and being accepted and acted upon by the people of different beliefs, especially by linking with the people’s respective faiths. This could be fully utilized in addressing environmental issues, which is one of the most currently debatable global concerns. Given the environmental degradation challenges facing Kilimanjaro region, the Northern Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania started an intervention on tree planting by involving youth enrolled in confirmation classes as a way of promoting environmental conservation behaviour among youths. Since the tree planting programme operate within the community, this study therefore was conducted to explore the way the community perceive this programme, which will determine their participation therein, and success of the programme. A cross-sectional research design was adopted and a random sample of 100 households that had registered their children for confirmation classes in different years from 2003 to 2015 were involved. A Structured questionnaire with Likert scale was used to capture perceptions of households complimented by Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews. The descriptive and content analysis was adopted. The findings revealed that about 85% of the households had positive perception about the innovative approach adopted by the church. Furthermore, the community members see the programme as part of their household responsibilities and a good approach through which the nature can regain its lost form and provide to them what had been lost. The findings confirm the argument under the theory of self-determination of environmental behavior since despite being the church intervention people perform a tree planting behaviour for their own sake and to gain positive results. In this case, youths got involved in the program so as to graduate from confirmation training while avoiding the negative outcomes that is failure to be confirmed.

Description

The East African Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities

Keywords

Perception, Community, Church, Trees Planting, Environment, Conservation, Behaviour, Confirmation

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