Women's Empowerment

Oxfam in Tanzania observed that women’s rights coalitions are organizing around different causes such as prevention and responding to gender based violence, women’s property rights, education, youth’s and women leadership. The spaces organized and facilitated by Oxfam in Tanzania were meant to add more voices to the existing issues and call for government to design and implement policies and programs addressing women’s needs and wants.

The Irish Aid Programme Grant 2: Gender Equity, Women and Youth Empowerment started in January 2017, and operates in three zones namely Lake Zone (Shinyanga, Mwanza, Simiyu, and Geita), Northern zone (Arusha and Manyara) and Southern zones (Lindi and Mtwara regions). In these three zones OiTZ worked with 10 implementing partners and more than 15 strategic partners who contributed towards the program goals. The program

implementation has been interlinked from the local level to the national level by developing influencing agendas that have been impactful from district to the national level.

During the implementation period the program supported poor marginalized women to increase their ownership over productive assets through land ownership and supported poor and marginalized women and youth to improve their ability to cope, respond and recover from stresses and shocks induced by climate change through technical trainings on postharvest management and support to women and youth groups.

The programme contributed to enhance capacity of implementing partners through training on gender equality, governance and transformational leadership. These training aimed at creating more awareness and

improving understanding on the importance of gender equality from the organizational level to the communities where the partners are working. This helped the partner organizations to set gender equity milestones for the organization policy and governance.

Furthermore, women in Arusha and Shinyanga regions received land title deeds which can be used as collateral for loans, help to reduce family land conflicts and guarantee women ownership of land in event of uncertainty (death).