Community-driven Development for 4 Communities around Wologizi Mountain, Liberia
Impact Projects

Community-driven Development for 4 Communities around Wologizi Mountain, Liberia

World Centric + Advocates for Community Alternatives/Village Development Fund

$29,660.00 from profits from fiscal year 2019

Communities around Wologizi Mountain in northwestern Liberia are under pressure to give up their forest to large-scale mining and logging activities by multinational corporations. The Wolgozi forest is one of the few remaining nature reserves in West Africa. Illegal miners and loggers are already taking advantage of the communities’ poverty to deprive them of their land and forest resources including collective rights to farmlands, water, shrines and sacred sites.

Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA) will work with Village Development Fund (VDF) to apply a combined advocacy, engagement, and mobilization strategy that arms communities with the legal firepower they need. ACA & VDF organize community members around a development vision of their own choice and connect them with the allies in local and national government they need to defend themselves. The skills developed and actions fostered will raise awareness of collective rights to land and resources; it will also empower and enable communities to organize, advocate and ensure the recognition and protection of community land rights by government and companies.


The Impact

  • 3338 individuals benefit from community organizing.
  • Disbursal of microgrants to fund development projects in each of the 4 villages.
  • Legal advocacy and action to strengthen community resistance to mining.
  • Quarterly meetings between communities and the local government

Indirect Impact:

  • Protect primary forest and maintain biodiversity.
  • Watersheds, primary forests, and other sensitive environmental areas are protected.
  • Shrines and sacred sites are preserved.
  • Parlay land rights into economic opportunities and stimulate sustainable agriculture production.
  • Job creation through forest guards.
  • Increases in social cohesion, civic engagement and expressions of solidarity for participating communities.
  • Increase in number of women and youth participating in community development.


About Advocates for Community Alternative

A World Centric partner since 2020.

Advocates for Community Alternatives helps West African communities that are threatened by the destructive impacts of extractives-led development to take control of their own futures. They do this by working with communities to design their own sustainable development plans and advocate to achieve those plans. ACA builds networks of lawyers and other experts to help the communities’ plans come to fruition.


About Village Development Fund

A World Centric partner since 2020.

The Village Development Fund (VDF) was established in 2004 by a group of professional Liberians eager to contribute to the reconstruction and development of their country just emerging from war. VDF strengthens the critical capacities of marginalized communities and transform their lives, organizes poor and marginalized communities for development networking, and establish village development trust funds. Their mission is to be a catalyst in community relief, development, empowerment, and transformation that enable the poorest to firmly plant their feet on the development ladder.

 

Written by

World Centric

 

Read time

3 minutes

 

Published on

Jul 14, 2020

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