Namibia: Oshikuku Town Council promotes Climate Change

Oshikuku is one of the towns that are hard hit during flooding every year in country. Houses, animals, business premises, trading zones for women and schools are not spared. Food and provision of access to medication become a challenge for the residents of this town. Water and sanitation is another issue women had to deal with. When flood occurs it brings chaos in town. Most of the school close down. It becomes so dangerous to travel. Many women and young kinds are the one mostly affected by the situation.  it becomes such a hard situation for the town to perform so well and able to derives and bring services to people.

The key objectives of this project is to bring together information from rural communities, indigenous peoples and research workers on how they use agro biodiversity to cope with climate change. To stimulate communication between agro biodiversity researchers, users and maintainers. Help to identify tools and practices relevant to using agro biodiversity for coping with climate change and making these widely available.

However,  these will lead to the main goals of this project, which are: To provide a synthesis of available information, assess major knowledge gaps and identify research that will respond to the needs of farmers, communities and indigenous peoples.

The main activities are:

• Reusing, and recycling waste.
• The council dig so big holes and able to save water and harvest water as well.
• This water will be used during drought time to save people from water scarce.
• The council try to make it better for people by building bridges for people to be able to travel from one place to another.

The Oshikuku Town Council allocated $3 515 to this project. In kind contributions amounted to $3 515. The total budget for the project is $7 030.

The Council has approved the Climate Strategy including a generic action plan. The Council resolution provides legitimisation to implement programmes and projects and, thus, gives them a required priority. Consequently, necessary financial resources for realising prioritised programmes and projects will be earmarked for the Council’s budget.

Challenges faced by this project is that schools are always disrupted during the flooding and during rain periods leaners cannot attend classes. There is no LED activities which are taking place and women cannot sell their products.

The council managed to overcome some of the challenges by coming up with a Strategy to address the plight of its residents there. The facilitator told delegates that, the Council should make sure that women form part of the envisaged Strategy formulation. This will allow them to influence on their needs. Oshikuku is one of the towns that are hard hit during flooding every year in country. Houses, animals, business premises, trading zones for women and schools are not spared. Food and provision of access to medication become a challenge for the residents of this town. Water and sanitation is another issue women had to deal with. When flood occurs it brings chaos in town. Most of the school close down, you would see water every way.

Town management always comes up with some measure and mechanism to try improve the situation . The town try to bring health services to people. To identify tools and practices relevant to using agro biodiversity for coping with climate change and making these widely available. This includes: To provide a synthesis of available information, assess major knowledge gaps and identify research that will respond to the needs of farmers, communities and indigenous peoples, and Senior citizens, boys and girls and businesses are affected as all these target groups have different needs.

Empowering women to participate fully in economic life and climate change programs in the Council, Ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men workers is highly implemented, case for corporate action to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in all activities.

women also empower by being trained and educated on some project. women being educated on skills and some projects. This projects real make women to becomes greater again. women would be able to get a job and able to put breads on the tables. Women would not only depend on their husband but they would provide their own things as well.

Oshikuku town women Maria shipunda business women “ We are indeed grateful for what council have done for us. We have been struggling for years to get portable water and proper sanitation Ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men workers is highly implemented, case for corporate action to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in all activities. women also empower by being trained and educated on some project. women being educated on skills and some projects.”

Public participation is a very important because we have access to get primary information from different sources, we have the ability to give our views and concerns and it’s a platform where the community can communicate with councillors and officials.

Town council invite meetings using different communication channels such as notice boards, radio and the loud speaker for each and every one to be aware of the meeting. Such meetings come with different agendas, sometimes they keep on discussing one thing many times and they don’t commit themselves to do the provision. We accept what we are being told and acknowledged the council for trying and doing the good job for our benefit. Through these meetings we can request the town council to ask some of the service providers to bring services closer to us since we travel long distances, like the mobile bank that comes on a monthly basis it has helped us a lot.

We use this opportunity to ask questions regarding the service provision as well give our complaints so that they can be addressed. We get the notification of meetings on time so that we can have enough time to prepare. With these platforms that the town council is providing our town will move an extra mile in development and growth.”

Information sessions on educating staff members has taken place which will improve the level of understanding because it will educate each and every staff member about the concept and scenarios to be followed on how to go about it. Platforms are created whereby politicians and administrators could meet and have discussions regarding the working environment, challenges facing the operation and identify possible solutions to address or overcome these challenges.