Today on International Women’s Day (8th March) we celebrate the work done by village birth attendants in Mali. Birth attendants are highly respected members of the community, who can also play a key role in improving nutrition and women and children’s health. There’s high maternal mortality on the Dogon Plateau, with many women dying from preventable causes, such as anaemia, poor hygiene, birth complications away from health centres or untreated malaria when they give birth.

Rewilding is a buzz word nowadays, but we have been rewilding in Mali for more than ten years. Herders and farmers have given over 5 million hectares of land to regenerate the tree and pasture resources they need. Protected from grazing - and from harvesting wood - the results of the rewilding have been extraordinary! Within ten years, each hectare now has bio-diverse pasture and 500 to 2000 new trees. This rewilding is allowing the regeneration of over 250 million new trees