Dr.
Yared Fubusa is the founder and Executive Director of GOSESO. In June
2010, Yared earned his Ph.D.
degree at Utah State University, U.S.A. studying human dimensions of natural
resource management and sustainable livelihoods of households in his indigenous
home of Kigoma Rural, Tanzania.
Yared was born and raised in a small village on the eastern portion of the Gombe Stream National Park. The following is Yared's account of a shocking childhood experience 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.
In the mid-1990s, Yared 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, Yared 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 Yared's admission to Longwood University in their hometown and the group raised money for his airfare to Virginia.
Yared 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 Ph.D. research at Utah State University sought 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. In the fall of 2008, Yared was elected by the Arlington-based Ashoka Foundation as a leading international social entrepreneur.
Yared has been featured as a keynote speaker at various educational institutions and conferences throughout the U.S. and beyond. 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.
To facilitate a more participatory approach to conservation efforts in Africa, Yared conceived the GOSESO vision in order to bridge the gap between human prosperity and wildlife conservation through the promotion of local participation in environmental decision-making, indigenous knowledge, and sustainable rural livelihoods. The GOSESO framework addresses pressing issues threatening both people and the environment in Africa while offering lessons with worldwide applicability. The project is born out of a sustainable livelihoods framework that documents how individuals cope with change, how households are able to organize themselves for survival, and how people are united in groups in order to achieve collective action to overcome threats to their livelihoods.