Yared
Fubusa is the founder and Executive Director of GOSESO. In the fall of
2008, Fubusa was elected by the Arlington-based Ashoka Foundation as a leading
international social entrepreneur. He was judged based on his exceptional
creativity, problem solving abilities, leadership skills, trustworthiness
in the community, and commitment to real social change.
Fubusa was born and raised in a small village on the eastern portion of the Gombe Stream National Park. In the mid-1990s, Fubusa became Dr. Jane Goodall's young research assistant. He was a founding member of Goodall's international program for young people, Roots and Shoots, where he became instrumental in launching outreach programs for the Jane Goodall Institute in Tanzania and around the world.
While working at Gombe Stream National Park, Fubusa hosted a group of high school students and their three chaperons from Prince Edward County High School in Virginia, who called themselves the African Primates Environmental Study (APES) group. As their gift to Tanzania, the APES group facilitated Fubusa's admission to Longwood University in their hometown and the group raised money for his airfare to Virginia.
Fubusa earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics at Longwood University in 2000, a Master's degree in Economics of parks and tourism from the University of Utah in 2003. He spent the 2003/04 academic year teaching at the University of Virginia. His current Ph.D. research at Utah State University seeks to bridge the gap between human prosperity with wildlife conservation through the promotion of local participation in environmental decision-making, sustainable livelihoods, rural economies, African indigenous institutions, and community-based conservation.
Fubusa has been featured as a keynote speaker at various educational institutions and conferences in 45 U.S. states. His speaking engagements cover a wide range of topics from rural economy, sustainable livelihoods, linkages of research knowledge and action, African indigenous institutions, community-based conservation to effects of African wildlife and foreign aid on the livelihoods of the African people. He is a fresh- and independent-thinker who is not afraid to tackle complex local and global forces affecting the livelihoods of the African people and natural resources. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has identified him as a distinguished social scientist. The following is Yared's account of a shocking human-wildlife conflict that changed his life:
It was my early life experiences growing up in a small village on the eastern shoreline of Lake Tanganyika just outside Gombe Stream National Park in western Tanzania that fueled my interest in community-based conservation. I was no more than five years old when my village hired a group of hunters to kill the 'enemy' baboons.
As a child I saw countless heads, legs, and hands of baboons on display in the government building in the center of the village. Almost everybody in the village came to see the 'enemy' animals that had crippled the subsistence economy and hindered crop productivity for centuries. Many of my friends were jubilant to see dead wild animals, but I never felt that way.
What I saw were heads of baboons that bore remarkable similarities to humans. As far as I can remember, watching their dead open eyes was like watching the eyes of my grandmother who had died the year before. Their faces clearly bore an uncanny resemblance to humans. Their dark eyes had the color of my own.
Even at that age, I felt that wild animals near our village were in danger and that their end was near. I now understand the connection between the plight of wildlife and the economic realities facing our people. As I grew up and took a leadership role within my community, I saw the need to create an institution that fosters the coexistence of humans and wildlife; one that bridges human prosperity with wildlife conservation. This is now the vision of the Gombe School of Environment and Society, or GOSESO.