Ngarenaro Youth Self-Help Group (NYSHG) began in 2004 when four youth from the Ngarenaro neighborhood of Arusha decided to come together to fight poverty in their society.  Most of the originating members were carpenters, so the group decided to begin by constructing pool tables and furniture.  The pool table business has been quite successful, yet the growing membership of NYSHG is also concerned with the drought that has been damaging the agricultural sector in Arusha and Tanzania, which is in part related to deforestation for fuelwood and construction.

Today, not only is their workshop used for carpentry, it is also a warehouse and selling point for sawdust-based fuel briquettes produced in nearby Moshi.  They have also recently learned to produce fuel briquettes from biomass waste through EVI's Future Fuels program and currently produce the wooden hand-press used for briquette production.

NYSHG is a founding member of EEDI-Arusha, seeing this network as an opportunity to expand the groups entrepreneurial ventures into environmental enterprise and also to build their own capacity in leadership, business and finance skills.