Assessment Of The Contribution Of Outreach Programme In Enhancing The Livelihood Of Adjacent Communities: A Case Of Serengeti National Park

ABSTRACT

The study was conducted to investigate the contribution of an outreach programme to the livelihood of communities adjacent SENAPA. Three specific objectives guided the study, that is, to explore perceptions of communities towards Outreach Programme (OP), to assess how the OP has improved livelihood; and to ascertain the challenges facing local communities living adjacent SENAPA. Four villages were involved in this study. These were Bisarara, Tamkeri, Gwikongo, and Bonchugu. The data were collected using interviews, questionnaire survey, observation and secondary data reviews. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis and quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the help of the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) Software version 20. Results were presented in form of frequencies, means, tables, and figures. The community perception of the services provided by outreach programme result varied across the villages. Overall, 55.51% had the opinion that services provided were very ineffective to ineffective. That is, could not meet the expectation of the local communities. The services provided by outreach programme in SENAPA include constructions of classrooms (29.98%), water tanks (19.45%), village dispensaries (14.50%), and watering point for livestock (9.83%); provision of teaching and learning materials for schools (10.93%), and renovation of teacher houses (15.32%). Crop raiding and livestock predation are among the challenges facing the communities in the study area. Crops affected are mainly maize, millet and cassava and livestock predated are cows, goats, sheep, and donkeys. Measures to minimize the problem include individual night guard (44.65%), forming groups for night patrol (31.95%) and informing the Rangers for wildlife invasion (23.4%). TANAPA has to increase financial resources through its OP in order to support more communityinitiated projects and encouraging the community to initiate the project in a favor of protecting the park.