Thérèse Mema Mapenzi

The Crisis We Face

Thérèse Mema Mapenzi is the Director for the Olame Centre in Bukavu, one of SCIAF's partners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and we're honoured to have her on the board at SCIAF. Through her life-changing work with women affected by sexual and gender based violence, Thérèse has seen first-hand how climate change's unpredictability further disrupts the lives of our sisters and brothers in DR Congo.

"Climate change is making the challenges we face in the DRC – conflict, food insecurity, gender-based violence – much worse and harder to fix. When the weather is unstable, it destabilises lives.

"When nature is polluted it affects many people here, in the villages they are not prepared for the impact of the rains being too small, it hurts their ability to grow crops and increases food insecurity. We are grateful to SCIAF because they were the first ones to talk about climate change here.

"We need to keep on talking about the environment, to help people become resilient so they can survive."

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