EAT was founded in 1993 by Douglas Chandler as a vehicle for promoting environmental sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa, where he had lived for many years. Initially he worked in what is now Zambia as an animal husbandry officer for the Department of Agriculture advising farmers on livestock welfare and management, spending an average of 20 days per month travelling the rangelands of the southern province as part of a team, living under canvas.
Having arrived in 1960 with his wife he witnessed the coming of independence and was a committed contributor to economic development. Later he went back to his earlier work as a farmer, growing tobacco as a cash crop and managing a herd of 500 cattle that needed dipping every week to protect them from tsetse fly. Later he moved to Botswana, returning to his animal husbandry role, with the Department of Agriculture. Sadly he was widowed during this period, but it is of significance that his wife’s parents for many years also lived in this part of Africa, as part of the colonial service in the post 1st World War era.
On retiring Douglas returned to UK and tried to settle down. His concern for species conservation, particularly Black Rhino, prompted him to commence exploring ways of providing assistance. His analysis concluded that education about the issues was an important component. Eventually he, along with others, founded EAT as a means of addressing the education issue. He established a schools correspondence programme involving more than a dozen pairs of Zimbabwean and UK schools. Information was exchanged between the schools for some time until his untimely death in 1997.
Regrettably the other Trustees lacked the resources needed to continue the work, principally time, and EAT fell dormant. However the Chairman, by now Mike Chandler, with the agreement of the other Trustees explored the options. Closing EAT down and transferring the assets to another Trust was the obvious easy option but this was quickly set to one side. Instead a number of initiatives were undertaken to seek out a partner of some kind, EAT had an asset, namely the Charity Commission registration that the Trustees were reluctant to relinquish providing a sustainable arrangement could be made.
Arrival of the Mpingo Conservation Project
In 2004, through EAT’s network, an introduction to Mpingo Conservation Project (MCP) was effected by Fauna & Flora International (FFI). FFI’s support for MCP had been long lived and had seen the project taken from an undergraduate expedition in 1996 to a project funded by BP and the Darwin Award and was running as an NGO in Tanzania with full-time staff by 2004. FFI continue to have a strong relationship with MCP. At this time, MCP was seeking a UK representative charity to support it in its fundraising, awareness-raising and operational activities and EAT felt this was an opportune moment to both support MCP’s development and for its own revival.
A correspondence was initiated by email between the two organisations. In due course an agreement was reached that MCP would put forward two Trustees to come on board alongside the existing EAT Trustees. Together they planned to revive EAT to become in the first instance the vehicle in UK that MCP needed and secondly to develop in its own right. The involvement of the MCP was therefore not only of benefit to the Tanzanian NGO, but also to EAT itself, and the charity is now undergoing a committed revival.
