In western Tanzania, in and around the Tabora region and its neighbouring landscapes – including Kigoma to the west, Mbeya and Katavi to the south, Singida to the east, Dodoma to the southeast, and Shinyanga to the north – a quiet transformation is taking place.
It begins with bees, but its impact reaches far beyond honey. Through sustainable beekeeping, environmental restoration, regenerative agriculture, social entrepreneurship, and community empowerment, Ecosystem Restoration Community Sustainable Beekeeping and Human Development (SuBeHuDe) is helping communities build more resilient livelihoods while restoring the ecosystems on which those livelihoods depend.
At the centre of this work is Mayaya K. S. Mack, SuBeHuDe’s co-founder and Executive Director, whose journey with bees began in an unlikely way: as a child fascinated by honey.
Today, his vision is much larger: to create a future in which young people and women are not merely beneficiaries of development, but active leaders of environmental restoration, sustainable enterprise, and community transformation.
Youth and women as the engine for community development
SuBeHuDe’s work is grounded in a simple but powerful realization: young people and women are often among the communities most affected by economic and environmental challenges, yet they also possess enormous potential to drive positive change.
“Youth and women are the engine of the development of a community and country,” Mayaya says. Yet significant barriers remain. In many rural communities, women continue to face limited access to decision-making, economic opportunities, skills, and productive resources. Young people, meanwhile, often struggle to find meaningful employment and pathways to participate in local economic development.
SuBeHuDe seeks to change this reality by equipping communities – particularly youth and women – with practical knowledge, skills, networks, and opportunities.
“We have been training communities on sustainable beekeeping, regenerative agriculture, ecosystem restoration, social entrepreneurship, and inclusive education,” Mayaya explains. “We are trying to build on the UN values of leaving no one behind, and this means, in particular, youth and women. They are our next generation.”
For SuBeHuDe, empowerment means more than training. It means enabling people to become economically independent, participate in decisions affecting their communities, and take leadership in building sustainable futures.
“We want them to be in the driver’s seat. They need to be in the driver’s seat for the sake of national development.”, adds Mayaya.
Bees as an incentive for ecosystem restoration
For communities facing immediate economic pressures, environmental conservation can sometimes feel like a long-term investment with little immediate return.
SuBeHuDe has sought to bridge this gap by connecting conservation with livelihoods.
“When you tell someone to plant a tree, they may have to wait seven to ten years before they see benefits,” Mayaya explains. “People need income now.”
This is where beekeeping becomes particularly powerful. Bees depend on healthy ecosystems. They need flowering plants, trees, water, and functioning landscapes. By creating economic value around bees and their products, communities have a practical incentive to protect the natural resources that sustain them.
Beekeeping can therefore become more than an income-generating activity. It can serve as an entry point into broader conversations about biodiversity, forest protection, tree planting, regenerative agriculture, and climate resilience.
“If there are no bees, there is no life on this planet,” Mayaya says.
The principle is simple: healthy ecosystems support bees; healthy bee populations support agriculture and biodiversity; and sustainable beekeeping can support community livelihoods.
From beekeeping to regenerative agriculture
SuBeHuDe’s work extends well beyond beekeeping. The organisation has encountered many smallholder farmers who are caught in cycles of high-input agriculture, relying heavily on purchased seeds, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and other external inputs.
“Farmers were investing heavily in seeds, industrial chemicals, and pesticides,” Mayaya explains. “At the same time, they are poisoning food sources and healthy soil.”
SuBeHuDe responds by promoting regenerative approaches – including permaculture, agroecology, intercropping, soil restoration, biodiversity enhancement, and other climate-smart farming practices.
The goal is not simply to increase production. It is to strengthen the ecological foundations of farming while reducing vulnerability to climate change and improving household resilience.
For SuBeHuDe, environmental conservation and livelihoods cannot be separated. Education and sustainable income are both essential to long-term ecosystem stewardship. When communities understand the value of healthy landscapes – and have viable economic alternatives – they are better positioned to become custodians of those landscapes.
From environmental training to social entrepreneurship
SuBeHuDe’s journey has also revealed an important lesson: technical knowledge alone is not enough.
“What started as environmental training evolved into something bigger.” Mayaya says. Initially, the organisation focused strongly on teaching communities about beekeeping and environmental conservation. Over time, however, it became clear that communities also needed the skills to transform knowledge into sustainable enterprises.
“We needed to build social entrepreneurship skills so communities could create businesses and sustain themselves.”, he adds.
This has led SuBeHuDe to integrate entrepreneurship, enterprise development, value addition, market thinking, and livelihood diversification into its programmes. The approach recognizes that conservation is more likely to endure when communities can see pathways toward economic security alongside environmental benefits.
Bringing sustainability into schools
For SuBeHuDe, long-term transformation begins with the next generation. The organisation therefore works with school communities to introduce children and young people to permaculture, agroecology, environmental stewardship, and sustainable food production.
In some schools, this involves redesigning school spaces to incorporate food forests, permaculture gardens, tree planting, irrigation systems, and practical learning environments.
“Next month I will be at my daughter’s school for a three-day training,” Mayaya says.
The objective is to make sustainability something students experience – not simply something they read about in textbooks.
By engaging children in growing food, planting trees, caring for ecosystems, and observing natural systems, SuBeHuDe hopes to nurture a generation that understands both the value of nature and its responsibility to protect it.
A mission built around people, planet and prosperity
Today, community capacity building, entrepreneurship, and environmental restoration sit at the heart of SuBeHuDe’s mission: to build a better world through sustainable solutions by empowering vulnerable communities – particularly youth, women, and marginalized groups – through climate-smart livelihoods, sustainable beekeeping, environmental conservation, biodiversity restoration, and inclusive economic opportunities.
Its core areas of work include:
- Sustainable Beekeeping and Nature-Based Livelihoods
- Biodiversity Conservation, Ecosystem Restoration and Climate Resilience
- Youth, Women and Inclusive Economic Empowerment
- Sustainable Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Resilience
- Community Development, Social Inclusion and Learning
Across these areas, SuBeHuDe seeks to connect environmental sustainability with human development.
From childhood honey thief to sustainable beekeeper
Mayaya’s relationship with bees goes back to childhood. When he was around ten years old, he and his friends had a secret habit: taking honey from a neighbour’s hives.
“My neighbour was a beekeeper,” he recalls with a laugh. “During that time, we used to steal honey from him. Did my neighbour inspire me to become a beekeeper? I don’t know, maybe,” he laughs.
What began as childhood curiosity eventually developed into a professional interest in beekeeping, forestry, sustainable livelihoods, and environmental conservation. But the social perception of beekeeping was very different when Mayaya was growing up.
“In rural areas, people believed that beekeeping was for elders,” he explains. “And in order to keep bees, you had to be a witch.”
Over the years, that perception has begun to change.
Through school-based climate initiatives, sustainable agriculture programmes, environmental education, and community training, younger generations are increasingly being exposed to beekeeping and ecosystem stewardship as legitimate and potentially rewarding pathways.
Even within Mayaya’s own family, the interest is being passed to the next generation. “One of my children is very interested in my work as a beekeeper,” he says. “She wants to understand what bees do, how we collect honey, and how we live with them.”
Beekeeping, traditional knowledge and natural products
Mayaya’s connection with bees also extends into traditional and natural uses of hive products.
He has developed an interest in apitherapy – the use of bee products such as honey, beeswax, propolis, and royal jelly in traditional and complementary health practices.
While many traditional uses of honey and other bee products are culturally important, SuBeHuDe’s broader focus remains on sustainable livelihoods, environmental stewardship, and responsible use of natural resources.
This connection between traditional knowledge, biodiversity, and sustainable enterprise is part of a wider opportunity: communities can build livelihoods around natural resources without degrading the ecosystems that produce them.
Looking ahead: From grassroots action to global collaboration
Like many grassroots organisations, SuBeHuDe faces a familiar challenge: resources.
Limited financial resources make it difficult to scale programmes, strengthen training and education initiatives, invest consistently in organisational capacity, and recruit and retain skilled staff and volunteers.
Yet the organisation continues to move forward, supported by committed volunteers, community partners, and a growing network of people who believe in its vision of “A sustainable world where people, planet, and prosperity thrive together.”
For Mayaya, the next step is connection. “We want to be part of international platforms. We want collaboration.”
For grassroots organisations such as SuBeHuDe, international networks are not simply about visibility. They can open doors to partnerships, knowledge exchange, technical support, fundraising, research collaboration, innovation, and opportunities to scale locally proven approaches.
The ambition is therefore not to move away from the grassroots, but to strengthen what is already happening there.
75 colonies – and a much bigger vision
Today, SuBeHuDe manages approximately 75 bee colonies. Some communities continue to use traditional beehives made from hollowed tree trunks – a longstanding beekeeping practice in rural Tanzania. These hives are locally available, relatively inexpensive, and familiar to many beekeepers.
At the same time, SuBeHuDe recognizes the potential of improved hive technologies to increase productivity, simplify colony management, and strengthen sustainable beekeeping enterprises where appropriate.
But the number of colonies tells only part of the story. The deeper achievement is the growing recognition that bees can be a bridge between livelihoods and landscapes, entrepreneurship and conservation, traditional knowledge and innovation, and community development and ecosystem restoration.
SuBeHuDe’s vision is ultimately about much more than honey. It is about creating communities that can prosper while restoring the natural systems upon which their prosperity depends.
And perhaps that is the real meaning behind the simple message:
No bees, no life.
If bees need healthy ecosystems to survive, and communities depend on healthy ecosystems to thrive, then protecting bees means protecting something much larger – the possibility of a resilient future for people, nature, and generations yet to come.
Even with limited resources, SuBeHuDe continues to grow, however slowly. With the help of community platforms such as ERC, SuBeHuDe can continue to build on their capacity growth.
SuBeHuDe invites those who are passionate about environmental stewardship to join their mission, whether through hands-on volunteer work or direct support. For those interested in an immersive experience, the organisation offers community-based homestays, offering a unique opportunity to witness their regenerative programs first hand. You can visit their website to explore current volunteer opportunities and application details. If traveling is not an option, you can still contribute significantly by donating to help scale their educational initiatives and conservation efforts, ensuring that SuBeHuDe continues to empower local communities and nurture the landscape for years to come.
Read more about SuBeHuDe or go to their website.
Volunteer blogger Isabel Romijnders is a Sustainability Anthropologist with a Masters degree in Cultural Anthropology: Sustainable Citizenship from Utrecht University.