Where policy lags, youth and women lead. A deep dive into the NGOs shaping and investing in inclusive climate entrepreneurship.
From dismissed to driving change
“Before YAWE’s training, I never imagined someone like me could speak at a village assembly,” says Edina Evodius, 26. “Now, I sit at the table. They listen.”
In Shinyanga, she was initially met with scepticism—dismissed for being too young, for daring to lead as a woman. But through consistency, community engagement, and results-driven action, Evodius changed the narrative. Today she leads environmental education programmes, organises tree-planting campaigns, and advocates for youth-inclusive policies in local development plans.
Just as crucially, she represents a broader shift happening across Tanzania, where youth and women are taking climate leadership roles despite structural barriers.
Edina Evodius is reaching women with tree seedlings in her community to promote tree planting initiative to restore the degraded landscape in Shinyanga. Photo by YAWE, 2024
Youth and women at climate core
In Tanzania, youth aren’t a niche cohort, they’re the majority: seventy-seven per cent of Tanzania’s population is under the age of 35.
And according to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN) Index Tanzania is one of the countries that is most vulnerable to climate change (ranked 147th out of 187 total countries).
Severe and frequent droughts and floods are major threats to Tanzanian economic strength and food security because rain-fed agriculture makes up a large portion of the country’s income. Tanzania’s National Climate Change Strategy (2021–2026) recognises the urgency of adaptation, with objectives on agriculture, water, and energy. Yet, resilience efforts are still in their infancy, and the strategy gives little detail on how youth and women will be included in implementation.
This gap between policy intention and demographic reality represents a significant disconnect. While climate change disproportionately affects women and youth, formal decision-making structures often exclude them. Women shoulder 80 per cent of food production globally, perform nearly three times more unpaid care work than men, and rely heavily on natural resources that climate change is rapidly depleting.
When scarcity deepens, so does their workload. And, most distressingly, nearly 80 per cent of those displaced by climate-related disasters are women and girls. These realities are rooted in structural inequalities that deny women equal rights to land, fair wages, social protections, and decision-making power.
This happens especially in contexts where the majority work in the informal sector without legal safeguards. Climate action without a gender lens ignores this truth, and risks reinforcing the very inequities it must dismantle.
This could be a missed opportunity because even though women and youth are the most vulnerable, they are powerful agents of change in innovation and climate resilience.
The NGOs filling the gaps
Lucky Michael, Founder and Executive Director of the Environmental Conservation Community of Tanzania (ECCT), frames this reality clearly: “Tanzania’s age structure is both a reality and a call to action.
With the majority of our population under 30, everything we do at ECCT is grounded in the understanding that youth are not a side note, they are the centre of our climate future.”
At ECCT, programmes like EcoWear are proving that innovation doesn’t require wealth, just vision. Young women known as “Eco Warriors” transform textile waste into sustainable fashion, using creativity as a tool for both climate advocacy and economic resilience.
Despite limited funding and access to formal markets, they’ve built local networks, leveraged social media for outreach, and partnered with community groups to extend their reach.
Laurel Kivuyo, environmental specialist and co-founder of Climate Hub Tanzania, was raised as a Maasai girl in Arusha and has turned inherited resilience into policy action. “When we launched Climate Hub Tanzania in 2021, we identified a critical gap in the climate ecosystem—there were very few spaces that meaningfully centred youth and women as leaders in climate action.”
Climate Hub Tanzania aims to fuse traditional knowledge with policy and innovation while giving youth and women platforms to drive change. The organisation bridges activism and policy, moving from awareness campaigns to influencing national climate strategies.
Through their climate literacy programme, young leaders like Naomi Koinase are integrating indigenous knowledge with environmental conservation, inspiring a new generation of Maasai girls to become climate leaders.
Vicent Laurent, Executive Director of YAWE (Youth and Women Emancipation), focuses on the intersection of disadvantages young women face. “YAWE addresses the double disadvantage young women face by applying a gender-transformative approach that challenges restrictive gender norms while expanding access to opportunities.”
YAWE shifts paradigms by training young leaders to connect climate science with daily life, building confidence and entrepreneurial literacy. The organisation recognises that meaningful change requires both individual capacity-building and systemic transformation.
The systemic barriers
The systemic challenges these leaders face are significant. Limited access to capital tops the list, followed by social norms that undervalue women’s leadership and policy gaps that fail to prioritise youth- and women-led initiatives. For young women, these challenges compound with gendered expectations around caregiving and mobility restrictions.
Laurent identifies additional barriers: “There is widespread lack of awareness among young people about existing local, national, and international climate change frameworks, and how they can influence or contribute to them. This combination of limited funding, weak structures, and low awareness presents a major challenge to enhancing meaningful youth engagement in climate leadership.”
These barriers create cycles where opportunities, resources, and influence remain concentrated among established groups, while those most affected by climate change (and often the most innovative in responding to it) struggle for recognition and support.
The NGOs in action
Despite these obstacles, tangible change is happening. ECCT’s She Leads Green programme has alumni turning rooftops into urban gardens and launching grassroots waste management efforts that directly respond to local environmental needs.
Through Climate Hub Tanzania’s network, Edward Jacob founded the Kilimo Sustainable Initiative, applying climate-smart farming techniques to help smallholder farmers improve food security while adapting to changing conditions.
In Shinyanga, YAWE’s trained leaders now hold seats on natural resource governance committees: spaces where youth voices were once unheard. Through climate education, environmental governance training, and grassroots organising, they’ve moved from exclusion to invitation.
They’re now called upon to speak at community planning meetings, where they raise awareness about climate risks and advocate for sustainable land use.
Another Climate Hub Tanzania graduate, Naomi Koinase, a young Maasai woman from Arusha, now leads the Omom Maasai Community Foundation, integrating indigenous knowledge with environmental conservation. These aren’t just inspiring stories; they’re strategic demonstrations of what happens when youth and women gain access to knowledge, tools, and support systems.
The path forward
Climate KIC has partnered with these organisations since 2023, providing education, skills development, and leadership training through multi-year commitments to seven youth organisations. This approach recognises that sustainable change requires patient capital and long-term partnerships, not short-term interventions.
What’s needed now goes beyond individual success stories. As Kivuyo puts it: “What we need are national-level youth funding streams, alongside simplified application systems and policies that formally recognise youth- and women-led initiatives as critical to climate governance.”
The next generation of Tanzanian leaders brings agility, cultural insight, and a fierce sense of urgency because this is the world they will inherit. And investing in them isn’t charity, its strategy. As Michael puts it: “Their leadership gives me confidence that Tanzania’s future is in capable hands.” Systemic reform must follow their lead: restructuring funding access, rewriting participation policies, and embedding youth voices into the heart of climate planning. Anything less misses the moment and overlooks the fact that women and youth are not the afterthought of climate action. They are its foundation and its future.
