Dimitra Clubs: Community Engagement for Empowerment

For more than a decade, Dimitra Clubs have been powerful drivers for people’s empowerment and women’s leadership in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa countries. They are groups of women, men and young people – mixed or not – who organize on a voluntary basis to bring about changes in their communities and resolve problems using their own resources, without relying on external support.

The clubs contribute to the achievements of FAO projects and programmes in areas like nutrition, peace, food security, climate change adaptation, and more. FAO facilitates their set up and provides them with training and coaching. They are self-managed and sustainable, triggering social and economic transformation in their communities.

Key facts and figures

Currently, there are Dimitra Clubs operating in Burundi, Burkina Faso, CAR, DRC, Ecuador, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Uganda. They consist of:

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Community Engagement Days (February – June 2021)

Community Engagement Days is a series of five webinars that reviews achievements, potential and challenges of community engagement for empowerment approaches in rural development and humanitarian interventions and strategies.

The series is open to a broad range of development stakeholders (non-governmental organizations, governments, United Nations and international development organizations, civil society, private sector and academia).

This series is organized by the Dimitra Clubs Team of the Rural Institutions, Services and Empowerment (RISE) Team of the Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division (ESP) of FAO with the support of the Flexible Multi-Partner Mechanism (FMM) and in collaboration with the Belgian Development Cooperation.

  • Webinar 1: Community Engagement for Empowerment: Key for People-Centred Rural Transformation? (February 2021) 
    Video recording / Article
  • Webinar 2: Community Engagement for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (March 2021)
    Video recording / Article 
  • Webinar 3: Community Engagement for Resilience and Peace (April 2021)
    Video recording / Article 
  • Webinar 4: Measuring the Results and Impact of Community Engagement for Empowerment  (May 2021) 
    Video recording / Article 
  • Webinar 5: Community Engagement for collective action (June 2021)
    Video recording / Article 

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