As we mark the 30th International Day of Families, the role families continue to play remains crucial in this fight to reduce the effects of climate change and without climate protection all progress made on development for past years will continue to be reversed.
We rally behind this year’s theme: Families and Climate Change, highlighting the need to build resilient communities to weather life's big shocks through initiating sustainable climate actions. Farmers and their families are a key force to be reckoned with to reduce food, nutrition and income insecurity resulting from the climate crisis and affecting millions of families around the world.
Children are the most affected and yet least responsible for climate change, leaving them highly exposed to severe weather conditions affecting their access to sanitation, education and opportunities for progress. This makes it harder for children to reach their full potential.
We call for radical changes towards a more circular economy, regenerative agriculture, greener jobs and skills training to conserve nature.
Humana People to People value families and put families at the centre of our programmes helping the build-up of resilient and sustainable families that are able to protect children from obstacles preventing them to succeed in life. In our Community Development programmes we promote social cohesion and together we find opportunities to create progress whilst strengthening children’s leadership on environmental issues. Our pedagogy engages students to take actions against the effects of climate change putting students at the forefront to take charge of their future and the planet.
Our Sustainable Agriculture and Environment programmes raise awareness about climate change, engage communities to initiate climate actions and foster positive attitudes towards preservation of nature in some of the hardest hit communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America. Fighting off climate change together with our 29 members spanning across the globe remains a top priority on our agenda: to protect the planet, build communities and support people by connecting them with others in transformative programmes, unleashing their potential for positive change and action.
Humana People to People India has been carrying out community development projects for more than 25 years fostering collective actions for vulnerable communities to create local opportunities for their community led development and better environment driven by the people themselves. The projects engage women, who are deprived access to resources, education, and denied participation in decision-making at family and community level. Children with special needs and their families are linked with appropriate government schemes. The projects work with both small, focused groups and large-scale programmes involving more than 500,000 people in 10 states and 40 different districts every year.
ADPP Mozambique’s Building a Blue Future for Ecosystems and People on the East African Coast (Blue Future) project places farmers and their families at the centre to adopt sustainable farming in the districts of Memba and Mossuril covering an area of more 1,000 km2 that includes a network of well-operated community-managed fishing areas. The project promotes ecosystem-based adaptations that reduce vulnerability and increase resilience of local communities to climate change impacts, aid coastal protection by planting 1 million mangrove trees and support resource-based livelihoods, especially fisheries, contributing to national climate and conservation targets. In 2023 the project worked with 1400 farmers, planted more than 50,000 trees, established 33 demonstration plots and 30 savings clubs.
Our member, DAPP Zimbabwe piloted a cook-stove project in 2022, since then the project has significantly contributed to the reduction of tree cutting and improved mitigating against the effects of Global Warming and Climate Change whilst reducing involuntary carbon intake by people to improve the health and well-being of women and children, who commonly cook on open fires. Since its inception the project has built more than 93,000 double firewood-saving cookstoves. Women in living in the districts where the project is operating are no longer spending much of their time in the bush looking for firewood, exposing them to animal attacks and gender-based violence.
In China GAIA Kunming, Climate Change Awareness Actions, Misereor project raises awareness about climate change by giving teachers, students and the general public access to good educational programs in a database with videos in Chinese/ Chinese subtitles. Since 2022 the GAIA Misereor team translated excellent videos about climate change to Chinese and established a popular science platform with 87 videos reaching out to more than 450,000 people every year.
Placing farmers and their families at the centre of sustainable farming is at the heart of our response to reduce the effects of climate change. It is our collective challenge that affects all of us and the opportunity to deter climate change is still there, it only needs concerted efforts from both the public and private sector to accelerate adaptation initiatives, coupled with sustained political will to invest towards disaster recovery and coping up mechanism in some of the most vulnerable communities. We support families to accelerate the passing down of sustainable values between generations since climate change is an intergenerational issue that will continue exist requiring young people to be part of finding transformative solutions. We continue to engage governments and partners to protect the most affected groups by inequality which are children and their families.
