Women in pastoralist Northern Tanzania learn skills to adapt to climate change
Date:
Women in pastoralist Northern Tanzania learn skills to adapt to climate change
Gladness Gilole thought that a woman must keep her dreams small. Growing up in the predominantly pastoral community of Sale, Ngorongoro in northern Tanzania, girls didn’t have big dreams.
As a member of the Maasai tribe, a community with deeply entrenched customs and traditions, her husband was selected as soon as she was born. At 15, she dropped out of school and married. She was widowed five years later, left with two children to take care of single-handedly in a harsh environment where rising temperatures and water scarcity severely threatened the livestock. Livestock for the Masai is life savings.
“The years that followed were very difficult for me. I lost everything, and whatever I had left, my husband’s family took away,” said Gladness.
“When resources are scarce, life is twice as hard for women who live in communities like mine where our rights are rarely respected.”
Things began to turn around in 2020, when she was living near the Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC), a community-based organization in Ngorongoro. There she heard about the Energize project that PWC was implementing with UN Women, supported by the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA).
The Energize project trained women and out of school girls in rural Maasai villages on entrepreneurship, the installation of solar equipment, making environmentally friendly bricks, and building sustainable bio-gas systems to reduce dependence on firewood for lighting and cooking.
Two years after participating in one of the project’s 5-month training courses, Gladness is thriving.
Gladness with a light she sells as an add-on to the solar equipment she installs in her community. Photo: Pastoral Women’s Council.
“I moved back to Sale and now I own a farm, manage a tailoring business and I sell and install solar equipment.”
Immediately after the training, she was also able to use the knowledge she gained on making bricks to build her own home and was hired to build a health dispensary in her village.
Gladness is one of 101 women who benefited from the Energize project. According to PWC Programme Officer, Selina Ngurumwa, the project is one of their greatest success stories because it is still bearing fruit.
“We still monitor their progress and so far, many of them have been able to convert the knowledge they gained into successful businesses. Others have been employed by a local solar company to do installations,” she said.
Gladness in front of the home she built in Sale, Ngorongoro. Photo: Pastoral Women’s Council.
UN Women continues to work in Tanzania to enhance women’s resilience to environmental changes. In an ongoing UN Women and UNFPA programme, also funded by KOICA, women are being equipped with knowledge on climate smart agricultural practices using technologies they previously lacked access to such as drip irrigation.
“We know that if we are to empower women economically, we also need to give them the knowledge and tools to adapt and respond to the changing weather patterns that impact their livelihoods. Especially in rural areas,” said Hodan Addou, UN Women Tanzania Representative. “And by empowering and recognizing them as agents of change, we can not only make a difference in those women’s lives, but in the lives of their families and greater communities.”
Today, Gladness works with other girls in her village, mentoring them and teaching them the adaptation skills she acquired.
“I want to help other young women see that there is hope for their future, and I want to play a role in making that hope a reality."
