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Knowledge, rights and leadership. The "Women in Action – Mwanamuke Tenda" project, delivered by PIFEVA with the Jane Goodall Institute, tackles climate vulnerability, economic exclusion and gender inequality at the same time in Mwenga territory, South Kivu.

Women who farm in Mwenga face compounding disadvantages: limited access to finance, fragile land rights, low literacy, absence from local decision-making bodies, and persistent disregard for their nature-based adaptation knowledge. Women in Action was designed to address all of these at once, because none of them can be solved in isolation.

Three strategic objectives, one overall goal

The overall goal is to increase climate change adaptation among 1,500 young and vulnerable women, including Indigenous women and internally displaced women, across agricultural, agroforestry and forestry value chains, while contributing significantly to forest conservation. Three strategic objectives frame the work: improving the protection of fundamental rights — land, environmental and Indigenous; increasing participation in decision-making within households, farmer groups and local institutions; and expanding access to and control over resources in agricultural and forestry value chains.

Nature-based solutions, learned and passed on between women

1,500 Indigenous women and girls have increased their uptake of nature-based agricultural solutions. The method rests on farmer field schools, installed and equipped, and run by trainers drawn from women's farmers' organisations. Local nurseries have been created or strengthened by the women themselves, with equipment and training provided to community nursery workers.

Beneficiaries developed their own cropping calendars and farming models adapted to a shifting climate. They generalised conservation agriculture to limit soil erosion, disseminated traditional seed varieties, successfully trialled diversified intercropping, produced ecological inputs and adopted improved irrigation equipment. Agroforestry was reinforced through the introduction of fruit, fodder and soil-fertilising species.

The project also supported income diversification — mushroom growing, beekeeping, fish farming, insect rearing on caterpillar host trees, and agro-processing units producing flour, oils and juices — alongside low-carbon energy alternatives: improved cookstoves, straw charcoal briquettes, biochar pyrolysis, biodigesters and solar dryers.

Finally, a seat at the table

160 members of Local Development Committees, 108 of them women, and 146 members of Local Community Forest Concessions were supported towards more inclusive governance. 27 women's farmers' organisations completed a gender-sensitive organisational strengthening programme covering agricultural and climate risk management. 260 Indigenous women took part in multi-stakeholder rural dialogues on recognition of land rights, and 80 of them began concrete steps towards land ownership or the negotiation of long-term, rights-respecting land-use agreements.

On the economic side, 1,224 Indigenous women and girls who are members of village savings groups and solidarity mutuals benefited from a programme strengthening their ecological income-generating activities; 25 of them received targeted leadership and advocacy training.

Protection as a precondition for action

No climate adaptation is possible for a woman who is not safe. Social contracts against gender-based violence, awareness campaigns and prevention training reached 1,278 people. Targeted work with 243 men is fostering positive, non-violent male role models, while Local Units against SGBV provide frontline response.

WOMEN IN ACTION IN NUMBERS

1,500 women and girls targeted

1,445 women with strengthened knowledge of nature-based solutions

1,420 women engaged in restoration, mapping and biomonitoring

1,224 village savings and solidarity mutual members supported

27 women's farmers' organisations strengthened

10 agroforestry demonstration sites established

243 men engaged as positive role models