The Gombe School of Environment and Society, or GOSESO, is located in the heart of the 500-acre Kitobe Forest, within walking distance of Lake Tanganyika and Gombe Stream National Park. Measuring approximately 20 square miles, Gombe is the smallest park in Tanzania. The park is located on the eastern shoreline of Lake Tanganyika, the longest and second-deepest lake, as well as the world’s third largest body of fresh water.
Since 1960, Gombe Stream National Park has been a research site of the chimpanzee population made famous by the world-renowned primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall.
Despite five decades of research and international publicity, local people near the Gombe Stream National Park are one of the poorest and most disenfranchised people in Tanzania. Unheard and unseen by the outside world, hundreds of thousands of local people eke out an existence based on unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and poor farming systems. The wildlife, notably the chimpanzee population, is declining in tandem with degradation of neighboring forests and rural livelihoods.
GOSESO has been described as the first serious indigenous-led organization in the Gombe area that has been incorporated in both Tanzania and the United States of America to foster environmental stewardship, economic viability, and human dignity. While the immediate effect of GOSESO is benefiting human and wildlife communities in western Tanzania, the project is being used as a model to affect national and international aspects of conservation and poverty mitigation.
We are demonstrating a responsible, sustainable use of resources that can be replicated throughout Tanzania, the balance of Africa, and indeed, worldwide.
