Kalagala Parish is located in an ‘urban’ Njeru Municipal Council but has nothing that is urban in its setting, structure or conditions. It is a rural remote community annexed to an urban municipal council.  A protected Mabira Forest Reserve surrounds the parish.  Kalagala is a subsistence farming community facing the challenges of agriculture’s extreme vulnerability to climate change. The community is poor and the poor agricultural outcomes and the rising cost of farming are pushing the Kalagala community to deplete the Mabira forest resources for a livelihood.  This is a threat to the environment protection in the region.  A study by F. Mabonga (2011) showed that, almost all the local people living near Mabira Forest solely depend on forest resources for their survival, hence overexploitation of forest resources. The major source of income in the community is charcoal obtaining 40.3%, followed by timber 31.7% and firewood 28.3%.

Research by the FSD intern J.Temm (2022) established that the Kalagala parish has massively encroached on the Mabira forest creating a dilemma of protecting a forest reserve against people’s livelihood sustenance.   The community urgently needs support in form of modern small-scale farming and/or alternative income-generating activities that preserve the environment and prevent the community’s reliance on the Mabira forest.

The five villages of Kalagala have a number of women and youth savings and lending groups.  Nonetheless, the groups do not have the knowledge and skills to turn their small savings into viable microenterprise ventures to improve their standards of living.  They need to be trained in the basics of ethical saving with the goal of engaging in microenterprise ventures to reduce their vulnerability to climate change threatened agriculture and reliance on the Mabira forest for a livelihood.

The project is intended to change the unsustainable community behaviors of dependence on the Mabira Forest Resources.  It will promote alternative sustainable microenterprise patterns of consumption and production that protect the natural resource base and improve the coexistence in the Mabira forest-surrounding ecosystem.

The project addresses the interlinked 17 Sustainable Development Goals of 1. ending poverty in all its forms everywhere by building the resilience of the poor to reduce their vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental shocks; 9. Building resilient infrastructure that promotes inclusive and sustainable industrialization and fosters innovation by increasing access of small-scale enterprises to the poor, including affordable credit and their integration into value chains and markets; 13 takes action to combat climate change and its impacts by promoting mechanisms for raising capacities for effective climate change-related management, focusing on women, youth, living in Kalagala marginalized communities.

The project will create employment opportunities and enable women and youth to contribute resources to the survival of their households