The article, published in time for International Women’s Day 2024, features some of the champions who are leading the charge to make Zambia’s conservation sector more inclusive, participatory and sustainable.

Sara, Lead Community Officer in WeForest’s Mukungule project, took part in USAID’s Women’s Leadership and Empowerment course, a training-of-trainers approach for people working in conservation and restoration. It aimed to equip them with the capacity to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment within their own organisations and the communities they work with.

“The training deepened my understanding of factors that keep women out of natural resource management and how to address these challenges and increase impacts of our programmes,” says Sara. “I am now able to adapt my work and reach out to the vulnerable groups, which is allowing our programme to have a broader reach.”