WOLTS Community Gender and Land Champions’ Training Programme

The Women’s Land Tenure Security Project (WOLTS) is a long-term global partnership between Mokoro, HakiMadini (Tanzania) and People Centered Conservation (PCC, Mongolia), committed to strengthening gender equity within inclusive and participatory land governance worldwide.

WOLTS began conducting action research in 2015, investigating the intersection of gender and land relations in different mining-affected pastoralist contexts and developing a methodology for long-term community engagement and capacity building to protect and support the land rights of all vulnerable people. Employing a range of participatory fieldwork techniques, with multiple site visits to validate and triangulate data, the WOLTS team aimed to strengthen the evidence base, collaborate with local and national stakeholders to identify ways to secure land rights, and support communities to withstand threats to their land and natural resources through a contextually-appropriate programme of training men and women community champions on gender and land.

The WOLTS approach – iteratively crafted over more than seven years of in-depth fieldwork and community engagement – has proven itself in strengthening cross-project learning, fostering local ownership, boosting participation and inclusivity in land governance, and challenging gendered social norms.

About WOLTS partners

People Centered Conservation (PCC) is a Mongolian NGO established in 2006, which aims to promote the protection of natural resources through support to the activities of local residents and civil society, with a strong commitment to addressing issues for gender equality and vulnerable groups. HakiMadini is a rights-based organisation working to support small-scale miners and communities living around Tanzania’s mineral abundant areas since the late 1990s, with an established programme focused on gender and mining.

Community Gender and Land Champions’ Training Programme

Building on evidence from earlier WOLTS action research, the WOLTS team collaboratively developed and tested an impactful training programme for locally-chosen men and women Gender and Land Champions in four pilot communities in Mongolia and Tanzania. In subsequent dissemination activities, Gender and Land Champions, men and women, developed their own stories and messages and elevated their voices beyond their communities, becomming empowered as confident actors for change and as influential local advisors. WOLTS has demonstrated that impactful dissemination and capacity building takes time and commitment, but is very possible and results in sustainable change.

Gender Guidelines for Land Management Planning

In Mongolia, the WOLTS team has also partnered since 2018 with the government’s Agency for Land Administration and Management, Geodesy and Cartography (ALAMGAC) in the design of new technical guidance on gender equity to support participatory local land management planning, building from the WOLTS approach and in collaboration with Gender and Land Champions in Mongolia. These Gender Guidelines were designed to strengthen inclusivity within Mongolia’s existing public consultations process during medium-term land management planning. They were shared with land officers in all districts of Mongolia, and all regional land officers, through online and in-person trainings in 2021 and 2022.

Outputs and Publications

Findings from the WOLTS Community Gender and Land Champions’ Training Programme in Mongolia and Tanzania have been published in two flagship impact reports and in numerous blogs by team members and Gender and Land Champions. Findings have also been shared in different national and international events and presentations, in person and online, and Mokoro continues to regularly report WOLTS news updates.

Visit the WOLTS Action Research on Gender, Land and Mining in Pastoralist Communities page