The Sauri Growth Initiative for Women and Youths with Disabilities, SGI, has launched a six-month training in Abuja to empower women with disabilities as advocates and watchdogs for gender-responsive climate policies and government budgets.
The programme, which began on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, will train 20 women with disabilities under SGI’s WomenLead2030+ project, equipping them with skills in policy analysis, budget tracking, and media engagement.
SGI Project Manager, Precious Ogbodo said “the initiative was conceived to close critical gaps in climate policies and ensure inclusivity in decision-making.”
“We realised that existing policies and the budgets are kind of not inclusive for women with disabilities. The idea behind this programme is to equip and educate the women with disabilities to become advocates and track budgets, to know where the gap is and how to follow up the government,” she explained.
The Executive Director of SGI, Comfort Ekwo, noted that women with disabilities are often excluded from disaster planning and emergency responses.
“If there is no sign language interpreter, the deaf will not benefit… If they don’t plan well for accessibilities for persons with disabilities, we don’t get to know,” she said, stressing that WWDs suffer the most during climate disasters due to systemic neglect.
As part of the training, participants developed the first climate change budget scorecard, which will be used to monitor government spending and accountability.
One of the trainees, Katherine Akor said her motivation was to push for climate justice and ensure inclusion.
“When they talk climate action, climate justice, persons with disabilities are usually left out. I actually decided to be a part of this so that I can also lend my voice to advocate for climate justice for women with disabilities especially,” she said.
Akor stated that she plans to use social media to amplify the message.
“My immediate step will be social media engagement, which is very vital in getting to a wide range of audience, especially the young ones. We have to start educating them early,” she stressed.
Another participant, Onyinyechi Ethelbert, said her focus would be on grassroots awareness.
“First of all, it’s for us to even be included in the decision-making process because if we’re not part of it, I don’t think there’s anything we can do in terms of tracking budget,” Ethelbert stated.
She further said that climate advocacy must also drive behavioural change.
“One major impact is we must endeavor to dispose of our waste properly. That is one major take home for me,” Ethelbert said.
The Abuja programme with the theme “When women lead, change follows!” is supported by the Women Environmental Programme (WEP). SGI said it plans to expand the training to other states after the completion of the FCT phase.
PIAK