WOMEN EMPOWERMENT IN CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATURE CONSERVATION

Potatoes grown in bags

 In most societies in Africa and elsewhere in the world women have little knowledge about nature conservation, climate change, and environmental protection.

We caught up with Catherine Nchimbi, a young woman from Tanzania, East Africa who is doing a lot of work in empowering both rural and urban women by teaching them about Climate Change and conservation.

She told this publication about her long passion-driven journey to empower communities, particularly women by teaching them about waste collection and sustainable agriculture.

As a young community leader with a clean environment at heart, she says she started teaching women about waste collection and sorting in  Tanzania.

Catherine has also brought some sustainable agriculture skills by teaching communities to grow their food in bags filled with compost, "This method of farming is suitable for those with little farming space, most of them who are residing in urban areas," she explained.

Her other projects included having workshops where she started teaching women about how to collect and separate waste according to its different types.

"Most women didn't know that mixed and dirty waste is hard to sell, I started teaching them to sort the waste according to its types," said Nchimbi.

"I also taught them how they can make valuable things out of waste, For example, Coconut shells can be used to make beautiful jewelry," Nchimbi added.

Catherine who is the Programs Director for We Naturalists Africa is also into Nature and Wildlife Conservation where she has been teaching rural communities who stay close to Wild Life parks about the importance of getting involved in Wildlife and Nature Conservation.

"Some of the challenges I face during my work of educating these communities is meeting well-educated people who know what Climate Change is all about but simply doesn't want to do the right thing as well as the issue of patriarchy in some communities and lack of transport and education among community members.

"I tried to encourage members to do some training to learn certain skills but in some cases, community members don't have basic education t  help them understand better". she added

Despite all these challenges Catherine hasn't given up on teaching women about nature conservation and climate change, she is in the process of establishing her NGO that will focus much on teaching women conservation, environmental protection, and climate change.

Away from her daily office job, Catherine is also into nature and wildlife photography.