The Resilience Champions
The Resilience Champions
When Women Contribute to the Resilience of Communities in the Sahel Through Savings and Community-Based Adaptation
The Sahel sub-region, due to its climatic, institutional, livelihood, economic, and environmental context, is one of the most vulnerable regions of the world. Since 2005, the recurrence of droughts and repeated shocks, compounded by depleted soil and natural resources, and by population increase, has heightened the levels of the population’s vulnerability to food and nutrition insecurity.
In most cases, women and girls are more vulnerable and they are often the first to suffer when crisis strikes. Climate change is already having significant impacts on food and income security, and these impacts are particularly serious for women and other marginalised groups.
This report shows how power dimensions in households and communities are shifting due to continued shocks and stresses, and provides strong evidence that Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA), especially when combined with community based climate change adaptation, are a very successful way of building resilience of individuals, communities and societies.