The proposed project is a follow-up to or a second phase of the organisation?s first biodiversity conservation project . In the first project, the organisation has successfully sensitized communities in Ward 16 on the importance of conserving indigenous medicinal plants. The sensitization exercise enabled the organisation to build a lasting rapport with community members and won the hearts of the famous herbalists in the area. Although the first project encountered a number of challenges, water shortage as chief among them, Traditional Health Foods Trust (THFT) has also managed to establish frameworks and modalities for the conservation of medicinal plants in Ward 16 which can also be adopted at district and national levels. These frameworks and modalities include conservation of indigenous medicinal plants through enhancing their commercial use (value addition) , preservation of indigenous knowledge on medicinal plants and adopting the commercial use of medicinal plants as a way of strengthening rural livelihoods (rural poverty and vulnerability reduction measure).

Therefore, the subsequent project intends to fully utilize these established frameworks and modalities to address the two main environmental challenges: the first one being unsustainable, inequitable and primitive exploitation of medicinal plants by communities in Mwacheta communal area. This first challenge has shaped the first project. Although the first project made significant strides on addressing this environmental challenge, a lot still needs to be done to conserve indigenous medicinal plants in Mwacheta. A number of gaps or opportunities were discovered in the first phase of the biodiversity conservation project: these include enhancing the livelihoods of rural communities through the sustainable, equitable and commercial use of indigenous medicinal plants resource. This sustainable harvest and commercial use of indigenous medicinal plants could, as discovered in the first phase of the biodiversity project, be an endogenous strategy for building and strengthening the resilience of rural communities to adverse effects of climate change and seasonality. It is now clear to rural communities in Ward 16 how the indigenous medicinal plants are of great importance for their livelihoods promotion and protection, hence supporting the commercial use of medicinal plants motivates communities to multiply and sustainably exploit medicinal plants.

The subsequent project will also upscale the cultivation of small-grain crops and nutritious indigenous vegetables with ultimate intentions of addressing the perennial livelihood stresses - food insecurity and malnutrition, and for ensuring the available of raw materials for the production and marketing of traditional health foods such as rapoko upfu and dried vegetables (mufushwa).