International Women’s Day: give a tree in Burkina Faso

The project in Burkina Faso and the situation of Burkinabe women

To initiate a process of women’s empowerment capable of supporting the local community to make it self-sufficient: this is the basis of the reforestation project in Burkina Faso. A genuine social reforestation project that allows you to adopt species essential to the villages’ livelihood: the Baobab, the Shea tree, the Moringa and the Neré are all species which, as well as helping to combat desertification, contribute to training Burkinabe women in the care and processing of the fruits of these trees into finished products, for both food and cosmetic use.

The situation of women in Burkina Faso suffers from a ‘deep-rooted problem’: the mortality rate during childbirth is very high, particularly due to early motherhood resulting from forced marriages at a young age; furthermore, the vast majority of women have no access to education because this is reserved for their sons.

This context is further compounded by cyclical fluctuations in agricultural production, the volatility of agricultural commodity prices, and environmental degradation: all these factors contribute to the fragility of the family structure in rural areas, which, as an emergency measure, begins to sell off grain stocks and seed reserves, resorting to migration and thereby reducing both the quantity and quality of food.