Empowering Women and Communities at the Frontline
By Natalie Sifuma
By his affable demeanour, it's hard to tell that Stephen Bright Sakwa is both an environmental and gender activist. If you move away from looking at him and opt to review his professional profile, you may get a sense of his commitment to the environment; but it's only until you visit him in Eastern Uganda that you get to see how determined he is to support women in advancing into community leadership positions.
Sakwa, as he prefers to be called, has been on a mission for the past year: to work hand in hand with the communities in the Mount Elgon region of Uganda, ensuring they build sustainable livelihoods, without needing to encroach the Mount Elgon National Park.
The quest has been a laborious one, but one made significantly simpler thanks to the support and input of his business partner Samantha Natumanya. Sakwa and Samantha began their collaborative endeavour by exploring the Mount Elgon community’s strengths, and found that their ways of life were intricately intertwined with the availability and abundance of natural resources.
In digging deeper, they found that beekeeping and regenerative agricultural practices could be adopted to guarantee farmers a consistent source of income and continuous soil health. To begin the process of working with these communities though, they had to solidify their project – and this inspired their decision to set up a social enterprise in 2022, which they named Bees and Trees Uganda. Through this initiative they have trained community members on bee keeping as a sustainable source of income.
Beyond this, appreciating the environment and working to restore the greenness of the area, Sakwa and his growing network have started planting indigenous trees to restore degraded sections of the region. In a bid to empower the local youth, Bees and Trees offer skills mentorship and training to enable green entrepreneurship in the area.
In this professional partnership, Sakwa’s belief that women deserve to be in leadership has become more firm – and he doesn’t shy away from sharing this, both online and offline. In fact, his belief has gone beyond advocating for women community leaders, to ensuring women can also be at top levels of leadership.
When we first engaged with Sakwa in the lead up to COP27, we were inspired by his dedication to advancing rural communities and protecting the environment – but more so that he shared in our belief that the climate crisis is a leadership crisis, and that underrepresented women deserve a say in climate mitigation.
Earlier this year Sakwa joined SHE Changes Climate as our ambassador in Uganda and his proactive persona has seen him advance in his role at SCC. He additionally wears a coordinator hat, working with our Head of Partnerships and Engagement to amplify our ambassador mentorship program. He joins us in our mission, working at grassroots level to empower women to step up as community leaders working to bring about positive change at all levels. In these efforts, stereotypical and traditional beliefs still hold fort, but because of his position as a man, Sakwa’s voice helps men in communities understand the fundamental role women have to play.
As an avid believer that kindness is fundamental in the journey to change, he believes that having female representation allows room for empathy but also for policies to be acted on with women in mind.
In his words: “Working with women on our projects really offers natural checks and balances. We have different strengths which ensure that mistakes are minimised and projects are more successful. Furthermore, having empowered women on our project team increases the confidence and active participation of women in the communities we work with.”
