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Tanzania field school unveils academic fit for Environment student
Sukhman Khosa, a third-year student, joined SFU’s inaugural Climate Change and Community Resilience Field School in Arusha, Tanzania, eager for an opportunity to get out of the classroom and into a community to learn first-hand about challenges and innovative solutions to address climate change and build resilience at local scales. Upon completion of the four-week course, she has clarity on how she wants to finish her degree.
“Climate change is a big issue globally and it is really important for everyone to learn what can be done at all levels,” says Sukhman.
Coming from a small agricultural town in Rajasthan, India, Sukhman quickly drew connections between her hometown and rural Tanzania, where the majority of the country’s GDP comes from the agricultural industry. She was curious to learn how the Tanzanian communities are responding to climate change and compare it to strategies used at home.
For her course inquiry project, Sukhman decided to explore the use of sustainable agriculture practices in Arusha communities alongside a couple of her classmates to gain a better understanding of how these methods build community resilience.
She attended sustainable agriculture training sessions hosted at the Aga Kahn University (AKU) Arusha campus for village leaders and visited the campus demonstration plots to learn about farming techniques and tools community members are being trained on to improve things like pollination, pest control, water management and more. She also spoke with a Maasai Elder currently adapting his practices to grow resilient variations of grass for his cattle to graze throughout the expanding dry seasons.
In a presentation to SFU President Joy Johnson and other delegates, the group shared their findings and noted the various benefits of these efforts to local communities, small businesses and AKU which include increased crop yields and profits, improved soil health and more.
Altogether, Sukhman says that she found exactly what she was looking for, and more, on the field school and says that she would like to continue to learn about Indigenous knowledge — a key element of the program — throughout her degree and is inspired to pursue a career in academia. "I learned much more in one month than I would learn in four months in all my courses,” she says.
“My takeaway from my time in Arusha is that there is so much happening in the communities that you wouldn’t be able to learn about while studying on campus,” says Sukhman. “There is so much knowledge to learn and share.”
Interested in participating in an international field school? Learn more here.