A Radio Campaign Amplifying Women’s Voices for Climate Adaptation

Several key messages were designed with the participation of partners, community leaders, and women’s representatives at the communal level. This was done to ensure that these messages would be understood by the entire community.

Some examples of key messages shared:

• The degradation of nature, drought, floods, strong winds, and conflicts between farmers and herders are real in my community.
• Women are particularly affected by climate change due to the heavy domestic workload, difficult access to land, and low levels of education.
• Together, let’s use local techniques for nature preservation and conservation to limit the impacts of climate change.
• Local elected officials, customary and religious leaders, women are especially impacted by climate change. Indeed, they face challenges in accessing secure land. By granting them the same rights as men—access, use, exploitation, and sustainable land development—women can become effective actors in the fight against climate change.
• Together, let’s advocate with customary authorities to promote sustainable land use by women through knowledge of their rights and training on gender equality.

These messages were then translated into the main local languages of the project intervention areas. This includes Mooré and Fulfulde for Burkina Faso; Bambara, Peulh, Sonrhaï, and Dogon for Mali; and Zarma, Peulh, Tamashek, and Hausa for Niger.

To ensure the effectiveness of the awareness campaign, partnership agreements were signed with community radio stations that have a high broadcast coverage rate in the project intervention zones.

This awareness campaign reached a large number of people. In total, 377,741 people (just over half of whom were women) were reached, according to data provided by the managers of the targeted community radios.

Launched in April 2023 for a duration of five years, the REELS project aims to foster the adoption and implementation of adapted solutions by women and their communities to address climate adaptation challenges, promoting co-benefits for ecosystems, all with increased transformational leadership of women throughout these processes.

Learn more about the project

The RÉELS project is implemented by CECI and its partners (IUCN, CIFOR/ICRAF, WILDAF) with financial support from the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada.