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Agricultural and Livestock Office appeared to have little involvement in the projectand only had very basic knowledge on REDD.It is however mainly Village Governments and VNRCs that TFCG and MJUMITAwill be working with, both in the implementation phase when VNRCs are elected andthroughout the duration of the project.Table 47: TFCG site selection process in KilosaOut of Kilosas 164 villages, 14 were selected. These were selected based on satellite images of thewhole block. By this they could see where the forests of the Eastern Arc Mountains were concentrated.An area was then selected following the criteria‟s of: potential in terms of good forest, presence ofmany different species, and experiencing pressure from neighboring villages. After they haddemarcated and decided upon the area, they went out to visit these villages to gather and giveinformation. Through this they added and changed the villages that would be included. With MasuguKati for example, they saw that it had access to a small forest. However, when they went there, theynoted that it was very degraded, so most people used the forest at Masugu Juu instead. Masugu Katiwas then included in the project together with Masugu Juu.Source: (Local resource person 2010)In terms of following the concept of FPIC at the village level, the team had met withthe Village Councils and Village Assemblies to establish a VNRC as well as onecommunication facilitator in each village. We were told that the launch became a bigprocess since all the villages had to be informed on how the project would operate. Tomake appointments and arrange meetings were not easy and they had to be creativeon how to inform due to difficult geographical considerations. A decision was madeto have meetings at sub-village level instead of at village level which took up furthertime and resources, but even so was seen as very important. First of all it wasimportant in order to create overall awareness and knowledge about the project and itsaims which in turn could play a part in ensuring that villagers saw the new rules andregulations as a legitimate reason for their reduced use and access to forest products.8.2.2.2.1 Creation of knowledge, awareness and legitimacy of REDD within villagesWe assessed the level of awareness of the project and put it up against the responseswe got on whether or not they were positive to the project. What we found was thatoverall 29% had never heard of REDD+ or any project which were about to startwithin their village boundaries. 64% knew that REDD was to be implemented andconcerned about forest protection. What they understood as TFCGs rationale behind228