| dc.description.abstract | The government of Uganda is committed to watershed conservation practices in the Manafwa river valley. Interventions have been made through Northern Uganda Social Action Fund, National Forestry Authority, National Environmental Management Authority and Manafwa Watershed Restoration and Stewardship in order to reduce watershed degradation. The implementation of MWARES has been in place for the last two years. This study was therefore intended to analyse the role of Integrated Farm Plan environmental approaches and conservation of the Manafwa watershed, Eastern Uganda. This was operationalized by specifically studying the locational characteristics of the area where the schools are found, the forms and process of activity integration within the watershed, the networking and collaboration strategies and the influence of pupils’ environmental awareness on watershed management. In further execution, the study adopted both a correlational research design to establish associations among variables and mixed methods to avail comprehensive conclusions. A sample of 214 respondents was selected using both purposive, and simple random sampling techniques, where 209 were from pupil environmental club participants and five of them from club patrons. The study availed descriptive, inferential, and qualitative findings after using a questionnaire, an interview guide, and observation checklist for data collection. By using Binary regression analysis, the study found that the forms and process of activity integration within Manafwa watershed from Bukalasi, Bushika, and Bushiyi had significant Beta values of 0.95, 0.96 and 0.96 respectively. Pupils' strategies of networking and collaboration in Manafwa watershed had a low positive effect with Beta values 0.38, 0.17 and 0.22 from Bushiyi, Bukalasi and Bushika Sub- Counties respectively. Pupils’ environmental awareness in all the three Sub-counties of Bukalasi, Bushika and Bushiyi had significant Beta values of 0.78, 0.86 and 0.85 respectively for watershed management. The study thus recommends that strategies like training pupils on how to put value to PIP products like fruits and bananas so as to generate funds to run their activities, training them on tree nursery bed establishment so as to ensure availability of trees to be planted in schools and for sale in the community and banana management, head teachers and classroom teachers to adequately timetable environmental club activities and constantly pass on conservation messages during classroom sessions, assemblies and budgeting for such activities. Further, district officials and partners like MWARES should train and retrain teachers to orient them towards environmental conservation responsibilities and occasionally organise environmental club competitions to boost competitiveness among schools. | en_US |
