Partnerships for People Stories

Around the world, communities depend on mangroves for food, protection, and income. These coastal forests provide for communities and the communities, in turn, protect the mangroves. It’s a relationship found all over the world across the more than 100 countries where mangroves guard the coast. Here are four places where a snapshot tells the story.

In Tanzania, many urban and rural areas still function under traditional customs that put women at a social and economic disadvantage. Fortunately, those discriminatory traditions, norms, and stereotypes are being challenged. Sijali Kipuli from Somanga Village in Tanzania shows us how a social system in savings and credits can economically liberate the poorest people and empower women.

Meeta is a young mother from India. Back-to-back pregnancies and heavy housework responsibilities took a toll on her health and wellbeing. Noting her declining health, a neighborhood social worker invited Meeta and her husband Ramkishore to participate in a CARE maternal health program that fostered open communication, education and access to family planning information.

As WWF works with communities around the world to preserve habitats, wildlife, and natural resources, we know that it is critical to engage both women and men for the best results—environmentally, socially, and economically.

In Mozambique’s Primeiras e Segundas region, villagers are taking part in a savings and loan association that’s revolutionizing how they manage their financial and natural resources.

When his three daughters were hungry, Omary Mbunda would turn to illegal timber for money. That changed when the CARE-WWF Alliance—a partnership focused on creating food systems that better nourish vulnerable communities while supporting healthy ecosystems—began promoting sustainable forestry management and conservation agriculture in Mbondo in 2015.

Building on a seven year-old pilot program in Mozambique, the CARE-WWF Alliance is now exploring opportunities to advance environmentally, socially and economically sustainable food production systems in Tanzania and Zambia.

WWF—through USAID’s Coral Triangle Support Partnership (CTSP)—helped revive and adapt a weaving program in Malaysia that would enable the women to earn income and sell fewer fish.