A Humble Organization Dedicated to Biodiversity Conservation

Community Initiatives for Biodiversity Conservation (CIBIC) is a nonprofit organisation initiated in 2012 by the community members neighbouring BINP led by Mr Tusingwire John Bosco. CIBIC is owned and operated by the local community. CIBIC began as a community-based organisation and later graduated to a non-governmental organisation as per operation permit number 6341 under the Non-Governmental Organisations Act 2016 of the Republic of Uganda.

Tusingwire John Bosco is a native of the Bwindi Community in Kanungu District. His motivation to start CIBIC derived from his own life experiences characterized by poverty, extreme hardship in education due to persistent poverty and occasional hunger. However, through life trials and errors, he was remembered by God in 2004 when he got a generous God-fearing person to sponsor his education on a diploma level up to 2007, and another one to further his education at the University of Makerere doing a degree in agricultural land use and management, from 2009 to 2012 through tourism activities in Bwindi.

While John was at the university after his first year, he got a vision of rewarding the conservation of the mountain gorillas as a way to end poverty, hunger and malnutrition in the communities adjacent to the park. John wishes that the new generations should not taste his life experience when he was still young (5-25 years of age). This is the reason while he mobilized other community members to come up together as a team and have CIBIC started and running to further enhancement of his dream.

Therefore, CIBIC was formed to empower local communities neighbouring national parks to reduce conservation threats and contribute to nature conservation through sustainable agriculture for alternative sources of food and income as opposed to poaching. CIBIC empowerment activities include conservation benefit education and awareness, operating learning centres and field demonstration gardens for training and supporting beneficiaries in the sustainable farming of fish, mushrooms, vegetables, fruits and small animal rearing and providing agricultural consulting services remotely to farmer members.

CIBIC also enables farmer’s access to local produce markets and tourism lodges. CIBIC established new markets to local tourism lodges for local food purchases, replacing food previously purchased in the cities and outside countries. This opportunity allows local farmers to enjoy the benefit of nature conservation hence allowing them to voluntarily conserve it. CIBIC’s goal is to establish an environment where humanity and nature are in harmony.

CIBIC is located in Buhoma Village, Kayonza Sub County, and Kanungu District in southwestern Uganda. It also operates a cooperative society partnership that is registered under the name Reformed Poachers and Batwa Farmers’ Cooperative Society Limited. The organisation is working with reformed poacher families including men and women and their children from around the national parks. CIBIC also works with indigenous communities like the Batwa pygmies of Bwindi. Our activities cut across all age groups.

The primary beneficiaries of this project are 1,004 Batwa Pygmies whose lives traditionally depended on the forest for food gathering and hunting before their eviction. Also 296 women and 201 reformed poachers in communities neighbouring the national park in Kanungu District and 2,000 youth from five schools in communities neighbouring Bwindi and Mgahinga National Parks.