You don't need to immediately eliminate world poverty, bring world peace or save the environment. You just have to do whatever you discover works with your modest resources to make a difference in the lives of the poor.

(William Easterly, 2006)

Improving human well-being and the environment

Liana is a non-profit Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) operating in development cooperation. Its role is advisory and supportive, aiming at building capacity through joint responsibility and joint learning. Liana works through local development organisations with whom it implements collaborative activities.

Liana focuses its interventions on the most vulnerable groups (e.g. communities in drylands with limited livelihood options) and works on problems perceived by the people themselves as the most critical. It strives to link local development initiatives with expertise, resources, information and knowledge.

Currently Liana has projects in Tanzania.

  1. Forest Garden Farming for People and the Planet (2023-2026) helps small-scale farmers in Mwanga district transfer their open fields of annual crops into diverse multi-layer agroforestry systems that are productive all year round and improve the natural environment.
  2. Forest Gardens for Environmental and Human Well-being in Masasi (2025-2028) operates in the Southern Coastal lowlands of Tanzania in Masasi, in Mtwara District. It utilises the same Forest Garden approach as the Mwanga project, however, adapted to the different cultural, economic, and natural environment. 
  3. The School project (2017-2024) in Rombo, Mwanga and Moshi has come to its end. Over seven years it helped schools to build rainwater harvesting tanks and firewood-saving stoves, and to use locally built handwashers near toilets for hand hygiene and recycling the waste water from the washers for growing trees in the school premises.  
    - 45 Firewood-saving stoves built; 28 Ferrocement water tanks of 30,000 liters built; 56 Handwashing units provided.

Visiting Forest Garden farmers in November 2024.

Sustainable Development Goals that Liana contributes to:

SDG 1 End poverty in its all forms everywhere
SDG 2 End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
SDG 5 Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
SDG 8 Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
SDG 10 Reduce inequality within and among countries
SDG 13 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
SDG 15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Liana bases its activities on best evidence and understanding:

  1. Lessons learned from practical development interventions
  2. Local knowledge
  3. Existing scientific knowledge base
  4. Analysing and interpreting the relevance of information to local problems, and generating more information by action research, surveys and experiments with its partners, and learning from other fields.

Liana is a membership organisation

It has Regular and Supporting members. Read more about becoming a member here.

Liana works as a network

The images below explain why we selected the name Liana. We do not have costly structures. Our activities are hosted and done together with existing local organisations. Our administration in Finland is done on a voluntary basis and thus all donations are used in development activities.


Lianas reach to attain new heights...


Lianas connect, link and form networks...


Lianas seem to have no beginning and no end...


Lianas can be used for climbing...


Lianas use existing structures...

 

Lianas are beautiful...