DYFED

DYFED was founded in 2024 by Blandine Bonianga, an environmentalist who has worked on women’s rights issues in the Democratic Republic of Congo for many years.

Blandine’s approach is built on the idea that women who are supported and recognised for their day-to-day work looking after land, forests, and their communities are well placed to protect the environment around them.

Supported by Synchronicity Earth’s Congo Basin Programme, DYFED focuses on sustainable agriculture, protecting forests and peatlands, and strengthening women’s leadership on land, energy, and climate issues. A key part of the team’s work is encouraging cultural management of the environment to address environmental injustices, whilst building the capacity and self-determination of women across the DRC.

Adolphine Lubaku, DYFED field assistant, and Arsène Nnama with an indigenous woman in the peatlands. © DYFED

In 2025, DYFED worked with women’s groups in the Équateur Province to rehabilitate three hectares of communal farmland. The project provided improved seeds and tools and trained 150 women in agroecology, combining classroom teaching with practical, hands-on work. Alongside the increase in food production, the project reduced pressure on surrounding forests and helped increase the women’s economic independence.

The same year, DYFED coordinated a monitoring project in Lokolama, Équateur Province, to look into why communities were abandoning community-based agricultural practices and to assess the degradation of peatlands in the area. The project demonstrated how community-based monitoring can support self-governance and ecological management, while raising awareness of the importance of the Congo Basin’s peatlands, which store around 30 billion tonnes of carbon and play a vital role in regulating the global climate.

“The small things women do every day connect them to nature (…) When we support women, we are automatically protecting the environment.” – Blandine Bonianga