The Tangamo Project (“Resistance” in Zarma) is a model developed by Pathfinder to build women’s resilience to the effects of climate change. The Tangamo project was initiated to deploy an integrated community health and income-generation approach to improve the quality of life of young women and girls who are migrants or affected by the migration of their partners.
Niger continues to experience severe land and natural resource degradation, which has a significant impact on food security, the resilience of agricultural production systems, economic infrastructure, and other means of household subsistence. Climate change particularly increases women’s vulnerability to economic and health shocks.
Seasonal migration by young people from rural to urban areas is one consequence of climate change. Increasing rainfall scarcity and soil degradation lead to chronic deficits in agricultural production in rural households. This creates a vicious cycle of malnutrition, particularly for mothers and their children. There are two types of seasonal migration:
- The migration of young men to cities, leaving their wives and children in the village with meager resources for subsistence
- The migration of young women and adolescent girls to cities in search of income for their household or to support preparation of their marriage
In both cases, migrations affect women’s resilience, including increased risks to their sexual and reproductive health. Both groups of women have an increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, risk of unintended pregnancies and clandestine abortions, rape and sexual harassment, and divorce either related to their own migration or the migration of their husbands.
Download the technical brief below to learn more.
