Women for Conservation

Who are the people you serve with your mission?

The main people we serve are rural Colombian women and children living in the mega-diverse buffer zones of our partner ProAves' nature reserves. Women for Conservation partners with local women's groups to provide programs which mutually benefit community wellbeing and biodiversity conservation. Our programs provide women with resources for family planning, nature conservation education, and sustainable livelihood training. We specifically serve women in order to maximize the good we are able to do, since uplifting women creates a ripple effect throughout the community. By combining nature conservation with women’s empowerment, we are able to multiply our impact, increase holistic community wellbeing, and invest in an environmentally conscious future generation.

How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?

To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals

What significant change resulted from feedback?

Our approach evolved from the understanding that communities cannot invest in biodiversity conservation when they are struggling to meet their basic needs. We are dedicated to working in solidarity with local women's groups and grassroots organizers to provide communities with the programs they request and need most. One example of a recent change we made at the request of our Vista Nieves Women for Conservation community group was to add cooking and food handling certification programs to our sustainable livelihoods workshop offerings. The women requested this new training program so that they could have the resources to establish their own culinary micro-businesses for the growing ecotourism economy.

Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?

We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback

What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?

We don’t have the right technology to collect and aggregate feedback efficiently, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection