Building on community mobilization as a vital tool for sustainable and effective natural resources management, ECoDAs strengthens community capacity to identify and respond to their needs, providing methods and resources for effective natural resources management through capacity building for communities. ECoDAs also mobilizes communities using a Rights-Based Approach and creating opportunities for conversations among community members, and between rights holders and duty bearers. The process of engaging the community to identify their needs, and to discover ways to plan, implement, and evaluate key activities is important in ensuring sustainable and ongoing community involvement. This principle is driven by our core objective; to empower communities, and to promote economically and ecologically sustainable communities as well as management of natural resources. We also strive to advocate for change of stakeholder and community perspective and behavior through training, workshops, media publications and public awareness campaigns.

As majority of Cameroonians in rural areas depend on agriculture and related activities to earn a living, climate patterns play a major role in securing the food and income security of the country as a whole. ECoDAs recognizes the need to enable communities and other stakeholders to respond to the impacts of climate change, including droughts and heavy floods. ECoDAs’ main focus is to support communities as they prepare for and respond to climate change, including mitigating it effects. Additionally, ECoDAs enables farmers to increase their resilience to climate change shocks. ECoDAs works on improving agricultural practices that promote and increase crop production and diversification while at the same time enhancing nutritional outcomes. We support smallholder farmers to diversify and increase their crops yields, to reduce farmers’ vulnerability to the adverse effects of climate change and enable them to adopt improved methods of farming, thus creating sustainable, long term food security.

Through developing livelihood approaches which incorporate a better understanding of natural resource management, communities can experience more stable incomes, increase their capacity to anticipate and respond to shocks, and see long term beneficial outcomes. The core of this program is for local communities to develop business skills, establish smart value chains, and understand how to access local markets with sustainable products. Thus, ECoDAs’ emphasis is on income generation, income security and enterprise promotion. Income security greatly reduces peoples’ vulnerability to food shortages, poor health and poverty. ECoDAs supports skills training for income generating activity, especially among women’s’ groups, and provides access to the necessary credit. Wherever possible, ECoDAs works with smallholder farmers to promote farming as a business, assisting in providing better produce storage, processing and marketing. ECoDAs’ focus is on creating opportunities for gainful employment that enhance prosperity and well-being at household and community level and take the excessive pressure off of natural resources.

The basic environmental conservation rule is that “if people are not made to understand why they should conserve, they may not see the need to do so”.  ECoDAs believes that although some people damage nature out of greed and are fully aware of the consequences, many do so from ignorance and/or are compelled by socio-economic inequities and the need to meet their basic needs. One of the key objectives of ECoDAs is to enhance and promote conservation and environmental education programs among young people and the general public on ways to sustainably utilize natural resources, the environment and ecosystem services that they provide. The aim is feeding attitudes and behaviour change, skills, knowledge, and values to prepare environmentally friendly citizens who care and protect nature and instilling a sense of environmental responsibility to Cameroon’s citizens.