Tanzania Stories From the Field: Women in the ECOBOMA, eco-village project are given the opportunity to ‘stand up and rise’.

ECOBOMA supports communities in northern Tanzania to adapt to climate change and become more resilient to unpredictable weather patterns. Interventions introduced include income generating activities which embrace women, vegetable leather-tanning, savings and loans groups and meat drying groups as an example. In 2018 a meat drying group called Emainyo which means ‘let’s stand up and rise’ and has 46 members (43 women and 3 men) was set up in Losinoni Kati village in Arumeru District, Arusha District Council. It offers an alternative livelihood, as the only other women-led economic activity for this community is making Maasai jewellery from beads.

The GCCA Tanzania programme started with the first phase from 2011 to 2013, during which three community-level projects on climate change adaptation were funded: (i) Resilient Landscapes for Resilient Communities in Pemba;  (ii) Empowering Vulnerable Rural Communities to Adapt and Mitigate the Impacts of Climate Change in Central Tanzania; and (iii) Enhancing Climate change adaptation and mitigation capacities of vulnerable communities in eco-villages of different ecosystems of the Uluguru Mountains. All three projects used the eco-village approach to increase the climate change resilience of the target communities.

The second phase of GCCA Tanzania built on the first phase and sought to extend the eco-village approach. Through an open call for proposals with detailed guidelines, 5 projects were selected and funded, with implementation periods from 2015 to 2019. ECOBOMA was one of them. Located in a semi-arid area of central Tanzania, communities continue to carry out an eco-village approach.