Increasing women’s participation and leadership in community forests and community protected areas is essential for promoting sustainable use of natural resources and ensuring equitable benefit sharing.
Over the past decade, RECOFTC has worked to improve communities’ resilience to economic and natural shocks through equitable community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). However, ensuring women’s participation continues to present multiple challenges. Many women experience resistance from their families or others in their communities, putting them at risk of harassment and physical and psychological stress, even assault.
Through the Rise UP! Project, we are supporting communication, training, campaigning multi-sectoral platform processes and men’s dialogues to encourage all community members to acknowledge women as essential and equal partners in CBNRM. We are working to embed a gender-based violence lens into existing programming to further support, protect and empower women in these networks.
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Since its launch in April 2023, Rise Up! has been providing a platform for women in communities to voice their concerns about addressing gender-based violence barriers to women’s participation and the other challenges they face. We are working to help create conditions in which women can fully and safely participate in CBNRM.
Presently, Rise Up! is being implemented in three community forests and five community protected areas in Pursat and Kampong Chhnang provinces. Gender issues are first being assessed in each site. Based on these assessments, we work with our partner, Gender and Development for Cambodia (GADC), to provide trainings for the communities overseeing each area. Our focus is on prevention and attitude and behavior change at the individual, interpersonal and community levels. It is key that men are included in the process.
Rise Up! is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and managed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) under the Resilient, Inclusive and Sustainable Environments (RISE) grant challenge.