We are celebrating our 10th anniversary in 2023! A decade of commitment to the rural population and biodiversity of the Comoros. To mark this milestone we invite you to explore 10 statistics that represent the evolution and impact of Dahari from 2013 to 2023.

Important growth – thanks to our collaborations

Dahari was officially created on 16th February 2013 when the first meeting of the Board of Trustees was held. It was the start of an independent Comorian institution as a major result of the Community Engagement for Sustainable Development (ECDD) project which lasted five years from 2008 to 2012.

Dahari’s first year was not easy. With only €67,000 in funding, all 15 staff had to accept reduced salaries to help the NGO get going.

10 years later, Dahari has 64 employees and has reached an annual budget of €780,000. A big thank you to all our donors who enabled this development but especially to the three key ones for this period: the European Union, the Darwin Initiative of the British government, and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF).

All together we have signed agreements with 67 technical and financial partners since 2013 (some on several occasions). These different collaborations have been key to our success; we have been fortunate to be supported by internationally-renowned institutions as well as loyal national partners.

Our results in the field

With 10,000 farmers supported since 2013, 2750 tree-planters accompanied since 2017, and 1300 fishermen supported since 2016, we have a total of 75,000 direct beneficiaries including families (the average family size in the Comoros is 5.37 individuals according to the World Bank). The number of indirect beneficiaries is even greater if we were to count the impacts on ecosystem services, the techniques replicated by neighbours, etc.

In collaboration with these beneficiaries we have:

• Planted 420,000 trees, including 200,000 fast-growing cuttings. These trees are planted by farmers in their fields using a participatory approach. The result, a survival rate of 72% after one year.
• Helped farmers to plant 280,000 food crop seeds (bananas, cassava, yams, tarots, sweet potatoes). Farmers continue to multiply them, contributing to their autonomy for improving productivity.
• Protected 228 hectares of reefs through local management measures (permanent or temporary) thanks to a gradual increase in the number of fishermen engaged in initiatives as members of associations (from 58 in 2016 to 501 in 2023).

Thanks to the Livingstone bat count that Dahari has been carrying out bi-annually since 2013, the number of known flying foxes has increased by more than 75% to 1489 individuals. This is due to the discovery of new roosts and conservation efforts undertaken – seven roosts are now protected by conservation agreements.

These field results are based on numerous studies carried out by our teams, by Comorian and foreign interns, or with our partners. Thirty documents – including reports published in scientific journals – are available on our website.

Towards greater impact

We are proud of our results and our impact over the past ten years, but we are also aware that we are still far from achieving our objective: the restoration of the ecosystems of the Comoros with rural communities.

However, we are confident – thanks to our strategic plan published at the start of 2022 and the subsequent evolution of our three forest, agroforest and marine programs – that the best is ahead of us. Instead of being satisfied with past successes, we are in the process of reviewing all our interventions to reshape and improve them and ensure greater impact.

Ten years after its creation, Dahari has become a strong institution thanks to a solid and united team, a remarkable Board of Directors, and relations of trust from our villages of intervention up to the international level. This institutional anchoring is perhaps the greatest success for Dahari, and we intend to capitalize on this achievement to make a significant difference on ecosystem restoration in the Comoros over the next 10 years.

We thank all the individuals and institutions who contributed to the first ten years of Dahari, and we hope to have your support for the decade to come!