The USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance II (ILRG II) Project is seeking applications from qualified organizations to provide Hosting Support for the Women’s Land and Resource Rights (WLR²) Platform in Zambia.

A cadre of over 100 men and women from across 25 government, non-governmental organizations (NGO), community-based organizations (CBO), and private sector institutions focused on women’s land and resource rights emerged from a series of ILRG-supported trainings between 2021 and 2023. Many of these individuals continued to provide support to organizations across Zambia using the tools and capacity building approaches that came out of this training. Members of this group have since established the WLR² Platform for continued learning, advocacy, and technical support designed to increase attention to women’s land and resource rights.

The platform was formalized in 2023 as a local social enterprise, Nthakachuma (land is wealth). Led by young land and resource rights champions, the platform positions itself as a gender championing organization that seeks to build expertise and a strong community of practice on gender equality in land and natural resource management in Zambia. Relying on a pool of gender and women rights champions, the WLR² Platform will support partnerships, organizational collaboration, training and mentoring to build capacity of institutions and groups to drive change at the community level. ILRG II will continue to share tools and provide technical advice to the WLR² Platform to adapt the tools and fulfill this mandate.

Working through a secretariat and network of champions, the Platform seeks to foster partnerships with land and conservation organizations to implement and scale various interventions focused on promoting women’s land and resource rights. The Platform will use the 50-50 Call Campaign as a strategy to galvanize action on women land and resource rights in Zambia.

Despite the momentum generated by the gender champions of the WLR² Platform, and the dedication of its secretariat, the organization is still young and lacks the institutional track record to manage donor funds. For this reason, ILRG II and the WLR² Platform are seeking an institutional host for the Platform secretariat that is committed to supporting the professionalization of the platform and the secretariat, with the specific aim of assisting the platform to “spin off” and become independent within the coming 18 months.

The institutional host will be responsible for helping the WLR² platform establish its institutional structure, supporting the financial management and administration associated with the program, as well as supporting the organization to develop independent policies and administrative capacity to stand alone.

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