Food. Income. Knowledge. Energy. Opportunity.

Women’s Climate Resilience in Yumbe

Implemented with support from Foundation S – The Sanofi Collective

Before the work began, we spoke with 100 women in Yumbe about the way climate pressure was changing their lives. Many were spending around four hours a day collecting water. Some travelled as far as 24 kilometres in search of firewood. Eighty-one per cent had experienced crop failure, and 63 per cent reported having withdrawn a child from school at some point because the household could not meet the cost.

Those answers changed the shape of the project. This could not be a farming course alone.

BetterLife worked with refugee, displaced and host-community women through local-language training and gardens where they could see each practice working. The women learnt composting, mulching, sack and box gardening, trellising, drought-tolerant crops, agroforestry and briquette-making. They received seedlings and support to use simple digital tools for soil and market information.

Among the 72 women who completed structured training, knowledge of climate-smart agriculture rose from 22 per cent to 92 per cent. Seventy-two per cent adopted sack or box gardening, 63 per cent took up composting, 54 per cent used mulching and 57 per cent introduced drought-tolerant crops. Participating households reported an average 35 per cent reduction in spending on vegetables as home production improved.

The figures matter, but so did the way the change happened. Women learnt in groups, saw the methods before risking their own resources and could return with questions after trying them at home. Confidence grew alongside knowledge.

Green Leaf Platforms Uganda

In partnership with Farm Radio International

What happens after a radio programme ends?

A woman may hear about a regenerative farming practice and understand it perfectly, yet still be unable to try it. She may not control the land, own a phone or have the materials to risk on an unfamiliar method. She may need to see the practice working nearby before she trusts it with a small harvest.

BetterLife’s partnership with Farm Radio International is designed around that gap between receiving information and acting on it.

Under Green Leaf Platforms Uganda, radio and digital agricultural content is connected to Women’s Action Circles across 12 districts. These circles build on groups women already trust, including savings groups, farmer organisations, cooperatives and community networks.

Women listen, discuss what the information means in their setting, ask questions, visit demonstration plots and test practices together. Peer champions support those with limited access to phones or extension services. Women’s feedback also travels back into the programme, helping shape content around the questions and barriers they are actually facing.

Farm Radio International brings its radio, digital and farmer-learning experience. BetterLife leads the women’s inclusion work on the ground, connecting listening to learning, practice and adoption.

The model grows from a lesson we first saw clearly in Yumbe: women adopt what they can see, and groups often carry change farther than individuals working alone.

BetterLife SPRING

Sustainable Powered Resilient Irrigation for Next Generation Farming

In South Sudan, farming families are expected to plan around rainfall that is becoming harder to predict. When rain stops too early, households lose food and the income they hoped to earn from the season.

BetterLife SPRING combines solar-powered irrigation with practical training in soil health, crop planning and water management. Farmers, refugees and displaced families can produce more reliably through dry periods without depending on fuel-powered pumping.

The project brings together clean energy, food production and livelihoods. The aim is not simply to install irrigation equipment, but to help communities use it well, maintain it and turn more reliable production into stronger household security.

BetterLife Agro Tourism Farm

The farm is BetterLife’s working demonstration and market link. Farmers learn through solar-powered irrigation, greenhouse farming, beekeeping, dairy production and livestock rearing, then have a route to supply produce through BetterLife Agro Tourism Farm Ltd.

Green Libraries, Eco Labs and School Climate Clubs

Green Libraries and Eco Labs give learners access to books, digital resources and practical environmental activities. Students take part in school gardens, tree planting, waste separation, plastic banks, debates and public speaking.

More than 4,500 students have been engaged through school climate education, and BetterLife has supported over 20 Green Libraries and Eco Labs. Our school work has included Lake Victoria School Entebbe and Buddo Junior School.

The aim is not to turn every child into a climate expert. It is to make the subject understandable enough for them to connect it to their home, school and community, and confident enough for them to act.

Apala One Stop Youth Centre

Talent exists in rural communities. Access often does not.

The Apala One Stop Youth Centre in Alebtong gives young people a place to read, use computers, learn digital skills and develop ideas. Launched in December 2023, the centre opened with ten computers, more than 3,000 books and space to serve around 400 young people.

Apala is both a learning centre and a statement about opportunity: where a young person is born should not decide how far their curiosity can take them.

Climate Education and Youth Enterprise in Tanzania

Together with FADECO, BetterLife uses schools, community radio and practical training to reach young people and communities in Tanzania.

Eco Clubs involve students in tree planting, waste management and environmental leadership. FADECO Radio carries information on climate, agriculture, health and livelihoods into communities that formal training may not reach.

Young people also learn skills such as reusable sanitary-pad production and liquid soap-making. The activities respond to health and dignity while opening small routes into enterprise.

BetterLife Pre-COP Climate Academy

Climate negotiations can feel distant from the places already living with the consequences. The BetterLife Pre-COP Climate Academy helps young Africans understand those negotiations and connect them to what is happening in their own communities.

Participants learn about adaptation, climate finance, loss and damage, negotiations and advocacy. The academy also asks a more grounded question: what do these decisions mean for a farmer facing drought, a family displaced by floods or a young person trying to build a future?

Supported by Moonshot, the virtual academy brings together young people from Uganda and across Africa to learn from experts and one another.

Climate Innovation Hackathons

BetterLife’s hackathons give young people a real problem, a team and room to build. Participants use technology, entrepreneurship and local knowledge to develop practical responses to climate and community challenges.

Our youth climate-innovation work has included support from ICPAC’s innovation ecosystem, connecting young people to regional climate knowledge and new opportunities to test their ideas.

Soilla

Soilla is BetterLife’s digital agricultural advisory platform. It helps farmers access soil and crop guidance, climate information, market prices and agricultural services.

Farmers can use the platform to better understand what may grow in their soil, monitor farm conditions, locate suppliers and experts and connect with other producers. The aim is to make information that is often expensive or distant more accessible to smallholder farmers.

Soilla is paired with field training because owning a phone or receiving data does not automatically make a tool useful. Farmers need confidence, local support and information that fits their crops and circumstances.

Our engagement with the World Food Programme has contributed to work around farmer information, verification and the responsible use of agricultural and climate data.

Agribusiness Connekt

Where Soilla supports production decisions, Agribusiness Connekt focuses on the business around the farm. It links producers to buyers, finance, services and market opportunities.

Together, the two platforms respond to a gap we see repeatedly: farmers learn how to produce, but remain disconnected from the systems that determine whether production becomes income.