Urban Tribal Empowerment & Sustainable Tourism
The Young Environmentalists Programme focuses on empowering the tribals in the Arey Forests of Mumbai, enabling them to enhance their food security, increase their incomes and improve their overall quality of life through more efficient management in the sector of self sufficiency in food security through seeds distribution, women empowerment, sustainable living, inclusive social life and academic education, sports, tribal tourism, wellness and health.
To improve the quality of life of tribal households in these remote areas through livelihood support and inclusive social living.
Mission Tribal Empowerment and Sustainable Tourism Ecological imbalance inside the Arey forests in Mumbai have been seriously undermining the livelihood patterns and increasing vulnerability of it’s inhabitants. A small land base, low agricultural productivity and low incomes have led to rising unhappiness. The life of the tribals is increasingly vulnerable due to a lack of assured entitlements to their resource base due to encroaching devlopments. Land alienation has deprived them of their land; forest legislation has turned them into encroachers on land they have always used; and now they have also been disproportionately affected by displacement due to modernization of the forest open spaces.
These have led to social discontent and unrest. The Young Environmentalists Programme researches and draws out plans to raise the wellness quotient of these habitants through various programmes researching and assisting through tribal sustainable tourism by various members of society.
The Tribal villages in which the scheduled tribes and scheduled castes form a greater part of the population and where most households are below the poverty line have been selected to be covered under the programme.
The overall strategy of the Programme focuses on empowering the tribals and enabling them to enhance their food security, increase their incomes and improve their overall quality of life through more efficient management based on the principles of improved resources.
A strong emphasis is placed on promoting participatory processes, building community bonding. fostering self-reliance, and respecting the indigenous knowledge and values of tribals. The Programme adopts a flexible, non-prescriptive, process-oriented approach to enable the stakeholders to determine the scope of Programme activities, their timing, pace and sequencing.