{"id":21922,"date":"2025-03-17T07:30:44","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T07:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moneyformadagascar.org\/?page_id=21922"},"modified":"2026-03-06T15:23:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T15:23:48","slug":"loud-and-proud-young-women-lead-community-developed-climate-change-responses","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/moneyformadagascar.org\/cy\/our-programmes\/forests-and-livelihoods\/saf-melaky\/loud-and-proud-young-women-lead-community-developed-climate-change-responses\/","title":{"rendered":"(English) Loud and PROUD: Young Women Lead Community-developed Climate Change Responses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mae’n ddrwg gen i, mae'r cofnod hwn dim ond ar gael mewn English<\/a>.<\/p>

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YOUNG women in a land-locked, remote area of Madagascar are taking the lead in their communities’ response to climate change.<\/h4>\n

\"\"A Money for Madagascar programme in Maintirano, capital of the Melaky region in western Madagascar, has helped 16 women aged 20-45 lead a series of initiatives which are building better lives for women, and the communities of which they are part, in the face of climate change and ongoing poverty and comparative isolation.<\/h4>\n

The Femmes menant des Innovations dans leur Environnement pour leur R\u00e9silience Economique et Sociale et celle de leurs communaut\u00e9s<\/em>, or FIERES \u2013 which translates in English as Women Leading Innovations in their Environment for their Economic and Social Resilience and that of their Communities<\/em>: PROUD \u2013 programme ran from 23 November 2003 to 30 November 2024, and has delivered power to women and their communities to improve their lives and livelihoods while protecting their environment and overcoming the impacts of climate change on them and their work.<\/h4>\n

Maintirano’s region Melaky is cut off from the rest of Madagascar for many months of the year, when the road in and out of the region is impassible. Though officially an Urban Commune, Maintirano is environmentally \u2013 and as a result also by its people’s activities \u2013 more like a rural area.<\/h4>\n

Almost all income-generation comes from agriculture, while climate change which is causing shorter rainy periods and higher temperatures resulting in water shortage and soil damage, the latter exacerbated by slash-and-burn cultivation, while more intense rain than average when precipitation does occur causes floods.\"\"<\/h4>\n

All of these, along with the region’s relative isolation, traps communities in poverty and food shortage \u2013 already a challenge in a nation in which 79.7 per cent of the population lives on or below the global poverty baseline of \u00a31.73 per day.<\/h4>\n

These factors in turn lead to reduced household incomes, and increased reliance on natural resources which are increasingly also under attack from climate change, and amplify structural societal inequalities, including between women and men. Women in particular had little or no access to resources, a low level of education, and little access to information, which makes them even more vulnerable.<\/h4>\n

\"\"PROUD, with funding from the French Foreign Office’s Innovative Projects of Civil Societies and Coalitions of Actors (PISCCA) and in partnership with SAF Melaky and the Federation of Women’s Associations FIVEMI, trained the young women to develop and deliver innovations and information about environmental protection, gender-based violence, the gender approach and positive discrimination, the causes of climate change, and group facilitation techniques.<\/h4>\n

It also engaged men, to ensure full community engagement and support, and promoted GECs: ‘savings and loans’ groups, through which members \u2013 the majority women \u2013 could fund innovations to improve incomes and community living standards.<\/h4>\n

PROUD delivered:<\/h4>\n