Women are the major users of the land. Their activities with the forest land gives them much control of it. They farm and fish, collect wood and other products that are important to them from the forest. The negative impact on forest lands are felt greatly by them (rural women). Therefore, activities aim at promoting sustainable forest use and management must involve them. Because they depend heavily on the forest for their livelihoods, efforts to conserve and management forests in a sustainable way require their full participation. They have understood that degraded forest will further exacerbate their situations; poverty, food insecurity and the loss of critical income generating opportunities. This increases the burden women carry in rural areas; a further demonstration of their vulnerability in situations of major degradation of the natural resource base. Strengthening the participation of women in natural resource management will boost efforts of nature conservation. They believed that a healthy forest will provide fresh and healthy ecosystem for their survival.

Activities:

Major activities of the project include the hosting of three (3) training workshops in Leadership, Mobilization and Participatory techniques in three additional districts. The primary objective of the workshops is to provide training in the three new districts to women who have seen the impacts of FCI’s last project and are requesting the replication of such activities in their districts. The project also intends to facilitate the transformation of the trained groups into Women Conservation Groups (WCG). This will provide opportunities for the women to be organized into formal structures which will also serve as a motivation for active participation and a way of mobilization the entire counties, and Conduct three (3) follow up meetings aimed at enhancing networking between groups that have been previously trained and those undergoing the training. These meetings will also serve as opportunities to evaluate their activities as well as plan for future activities; and outline strategies to include other communities in women in the process.