The Women's Land Rights Institute Podcast

'Change is happening. Even when I go about into the communities, I can see that the message is getting out there and some women are realising they can use their rights.'

Vivienne Francis is a Gender Officer with Action for Community Transformation (ACT), a community empowerment NGO in Liberia. She's passionate about the work, and a believer in the possibility of positive change for women and girls. Even if progress is slow, she says, it's happening. Vivienne spoke with Dominic Black about optimism; the challenges for communities who want to benefit from new land registration laws in Liberia; why land matters; and how she found her way into this work. 

'This forty acres is giving us income and...all the income goes to an account and we actually allocate it to the girls as bursaries. That if our husbands cannot raise school fees – they prefer raising school fees for the boys – at least we can take the girls with our own money to school.’

The words of a woman living in rural Kenya inspire Winny Chepkemoi to believe in the possibility of positive change, as she discusses in this first episode of a new podcast from the Women's Land Rights Institute. And she remembers how she first came to realize how valuable land can be as a tool for raising women and girls out of poverty.