The HoPE-LVB: Gender Equality project works to promote gender equality in the Lake Victoria basin by training women and young mothers on how to integrate health and conservation practices and facilitating community dialogue sessions around the intersection of gender, sexual and reproductive health and the environment. Their work is empowering women and helps to bridge gender gaps and encourage input and support from all the members of the community.
Overview
A successful population, health and environment (PHE) project requires the full and equal participation of the entire community. In order to address the interconnected challenges related to PHE—poor maternal and child health, a lack of access to contraception, dwindling fish supply, deforestation and more—interventions must also work toward creating gender equality. Women must be able to exercise their right to sexual and reproductive health care services, including their ability to choose if or when to have children. They must be able to participate in income-generating activities, which improve their economic situation and better equip them to protect both their families and the natural resources on which they depend.
The Health of People and the Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin (HoPE-LVB) project works to promote gender equality by implementing a range of activities, including training women's and young mother's groups on how to integrate health and conservation practices and conducting community dialogue sessions surrounding the intersection between gender, sexual and reproductive health and the environment. This helps to bridge gender gaps and encourages input and support from all community members.
The document linked below provides some case studies highlighting two amazing women on Bussi Island, Uganda. These women felt pressured to marry young and have many children quickly. In many cases women in the region don't even know that contraception or family planning are options. The HoPE-LVB project provided these women with reproductive health and conservation training and the women were immediately empowered. Fausta, along with nine other women, began a tree nursery to help replenish depleted forests. While working, they discussed the benefits of contraception and women learned, some for the first time, that they had options. Dorothy was never taught that she should immunize her children or that spacing her pregnancies could protect both her life and the life of her children, but now joins young women just like her in sharing knowledge about family planning, hand washing, child immunization, energy-saving stoves and more.