CBA14 Marketplace: Center for Women-Led Climate Adaptation Breaks Ground in Uganda
Introduction
What rural women have now is infrequent access to training, often without needed follow up and support, and the inability to leverage women’s collective strength in the region for economic, cultural and political change for real solutions to climate change impacts.
The Women’s Climate Centers concept was developed from a community study in Kenya conducted by WCCI team member Rose Wamalwa with Women’s Water and Natural Resources Conservation. Rural women expressed the need for a regional network of training centers to serve as “social and economic knowledge hubs and as a resource of expertise, training, data collection and analysis on matters that affect women and the community at large within the context of African women and climate change.” The Women’s Climate Centers is a direct response to the women’s call to action.
Methods
The Women’s Climate Centers address the major impediments to rural women’s leadership on climate change solutions: insufficient capacity; lack of access to a holistic, low-cost, locally appropriate suite of climate change resilience technologies; scarcity of women-led public platforms and institutions to showcase rural women’s accomplishments; lack of access to capital and sustainable livelihoods; insufficient leverage for collective impact on public policy and initiative.
As African women-led, brick-and-mortar institutions, the Centers provide the necessary leverage for rural women leaders to influence local and national policy, both on gender and climate change. A physical site showcases locally appropriate climate resilience solutions and enhances the leadership position of women from the local to the national to the international level.
Next Steps
Despite some delays due to the onset of COVID-19, our flagship Women’s Center is under construction in Tororo, eastern Uganda. Completion is expected in early 2021. Meanwhile, the Women's Climate Centers International African leadership team is conducting consultations and trainings in Tororo as well in other rural locations in Uganda and Kenya which will contribute to research and policy outputs by the International Institute for Environment and Development and the World Resources Institute.
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