Forest of Hope Association (FHA) is a local Non-Government Organization (NGO) working on conservation of the Gishwati Natural Forest (now part of the Gishwati-Mukura National Park) in Rwanda since January 2012. It emerged from senior Rwandan staff of the Great Ape Trust/ Gishwati Area Conservation Program (GACP), an International NGO that conserved Gishwati Forest Reserve from 2008 through 2011. FHA mission is engaging local communities in conservation and restoration of protected areas. This is done through sensitizing local people about the importance of conserving the protected areas; improving local livelihoods through income generation and capacity building; and reducing conflicts between local people and the protected areas.

Members of FHA have more than 15 years’ experience in conservation of the Gishwati Natural Forest. Under GACP, FHA members gained important managerial and technical skills. Thus, through grant proposals writing, since 2012, FHA receives funds from different international donors to contribute to the conservation of the Gishwati-Mukura National Park. These include Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, World Wide Fund for Nature/Sweden through International Gorilla Conservation Programme, Rufford Foundation, International Primatological Society, British Ecological Society, International Tree Foundation (ITF), West Chester University Foundation, Drake University, Wilderness Rwanda and TerraFund for AFR100. Currently, FHA focuses its activities on conservation of the Gishwati Natural Forest. These include enhancing a community-based forest protection through: community outreach, improving local livelihoods, reducing human-wildlife conflicts.

Using the Shinehouse Gishwati Research Station established is Gishwati in partnership with The West Chester University Foundation of Pennsylvania, FHA is facilitating different researches on Gishwati Biodiversity, hosting researchers from different universities and research institutions all over the world. Indeed, FHA helps to better understand the Gishwati biodiversity and socio-economic life by facilitating research on primates, forest dynamics, crop raiding and livelihoods.

FHA is also collaborating with Wilderness Rwanda in the areas of tourism, conservation and community development, focusing on chimpanzee monitoring and habituation, community education, tourism product development and more. Through this collaboration the Forest of Hope Guest House and Camp Site is also established at the Gishwati Research Station and is nowadays facilitating all visits to the Gishwati concession, Part of the Gishwati-Mukura National Park. Every visit contributes to the reforestation, protection and conservation of the park’s diversity and the upliftment of its surrounding communities.

Also FHA raises local conservation awareness through 13 local schools’ eco-clubs and regular community meetings. FHA also established a small library to support local students and teachers. FHA supports local farmers in beekeeping business as a strategy to mitigate human-wildlife conflicts. Farmers use revenue from honey to fence their ranches to prevent cows from entering the forest and to buy maize that they avoid to plant in the forest vicinity because it is destroyed by chimpanzees and monkeys. FHA also assists local people to improve livelihoods through jobs provision, community tourism development and linking cooperatives to markets. FHA successfully advocated for upgrading the Gishwati Forest to a National Park and developed an interim management plan of the Gishwati Natural Forest that is served as a basis for the development of the general management plan of the Gishwati-Mukura National Park and the development of infrastructure around the Gishwati forest. The Gishwati-Mukura National park was gazetted on February 1, 2016. This new status brought a long term protection of the Gishwati natural forest, and continues ensuring the survival of the biodiversity that it shelters and increase of other ecosystem services that it provides, including water and microclimate regulation. Thanks to Rwandan government, Forest of Hope Association and other Partners for this big achievement.