Women involved in the DRYAD project have made remarkable advances in participation, decision making and financial empowerment.
In the Financing Sustainable Community Forest Enterprises in Cameroon project, known as DRYAD, which ran 2015–2020, all 29 community forests in the DRYAD portfolio now have women on their executive committees; women head 44% of community forest enterprises; and almost half of those trained and employed in the enterprises are women.
These are unprecedented statistics for the community forest sector in Cameroon: before DRYAD women were passive in both participation and management.
But the inclusion of vulnerable community groups including women in decision-making structures just for the sake of numbers may not change anything for the better nor achieve the objective of inclusivity. Empowerment of women, in particular, to actively participate and make decisions was, therefore, a priority for DRYAD. Women were helped to sample community opinion a