Background More Information.. 

1.3 The Mission:

The mission of CORDS or the fundamental purpose of CORDS is to enhance sustainable pastoral livelihoodss. CORDS Mission is To work for holistic social development and to fight against all forms of injustices, oppression, gender imbalances, poverty, hunger, ignorance and disease.

CORDS has been implementing five main programmes which have a set of targets, objectives and activities which support and complement each other. They all build and contribute to CORDS core goal that aims at enhancing security of resource tenure and management of the natural resources for the pastoral Maasai communities in northern Tanzania. CORDS coordination and institutional development unit provides the necessary managerial systems and skills needed for the implementation of programmes activities. These programmes are highlighted below:-

Pastoral Land Rights Protection Programme: The main aim of the land rights programme is to improve the living standards of the pastoral communities through demarcation, mapping, certification, collective titling of key pastoral resource and facilitating the security of a livelihoods of their own choice i.e. pastoralism.

Pastoral Resource Utilization and Management Programme:The primary goal of the programme is to empower communities and enable them to govern their key natural resources, which will lead to optimal resource use and sustainable development.

Animal health and livestock Improvement Programme: The overall objective of the programme is "To reduce poverty, to improve livelihoodss, to generate income and to uphold the dignity of the marginalized pastoral communities, through improvement of livestock and livestock production, agricultural production and enhancement of land security tenure, and ensuring household food security".

Gender and Women's Development Programme:The primary goal of the programme is to integrate women fully into pastoral development processes through initiating projects that reduce women's workloads, improve their working and living conditions and enhance development status of pastoral women from the grass roots.

Community Pastoralist Radio Programme: : The main purpose of the project has been to integrate information fully into pastoral development processes through coordinating initiatives that inform the pastoralists about issues of primary concerns in development, politics, human rights, poverty reduction and identity. From our programme implementation philosophy/approach, Land Rights Programme stands as output one, Pastoral Resources Utilization and Management Programme represents output two and Gender and women Development Programme stand for output three. Livestock and Radio Programme are cross-cutting programmes. With this regards, the five main programmes are leading to integrated chain of results.

1.4 Organizational Structure: CORDS is registered as a membership organization and the twelve founding members form the organ which is the ultimate voice in the organization. It is managed by a Board of trustee that overseas policy formulation and provides direction for the whole organization. Reporting to the Board is the Coordinator who is the chief executive of the organization. The Projects manager and the financial officer both report to the Coordinator. Under the management team are the field officers who manage specific programmes activities. At the village level, there are village development committees which co - ordinate and supervise specific village activities.

1.5 Target Group: Pastoral Maasai communities who are marginalized and suffering significantly from structural causes of poverty.