Artisanal Gold Council (AGC) joins nonprofits in the global mercury reduction community in commemoration of International Women’s Day.
2024’s International Women’s Day theme is Inspire Inclusion. A key objective of AGC’s work is to promote gender equity in artisanal and small-scale gold mining projects throughout our project sites.
Below, we showcase some of the advances our projects have made with the support of our partners and local communities.
Burkina Faso accesses Canadian Embassy Community Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI) to advance gender equity initiatives
Translated from original French in Facebook post below:
Women miners in Poura can now produce gold without mercury, thanks to the Canadian Embassy’s Canada Fund for Local Initiatives in Burkina Faso.
As part of this project, Artisanal Gold Council Burkina Faso has installed two Gold Kacha concentrators for the benefit of two women’s mining cooperatives in the commune of Poura. The installation of this equipment will not only contribute to the economic empowerment of these women, but above all to the preservation of their health.
To enable the beneficiaries to master the operation and maintenance of the equipment, a training session was held today, November 21, 2023.
At the end of the mercury-free treatment process with the trainer, the beneficiaries were very satisfied with the speed, efficiency and, above all, the higher gold recovery rate of this machine.
The beneficiary cooperatives are very happy and are looking forward to starting their program of activities and promoting this technology throughout the commune.
The results of the tests with the trainer were so convincing that other artisanal miners onlookers asked about the cost and method of acquiring the machine.
While thanking the project team and the Canadian Embassy in Burkina Faso and Benin, the beneficiary cooperatives were keen to reassure their commitment and their appropriation of this technique in order to make a real contribution to eliminating mercury from the artisanal gold mining chain.
AGC-executed planetGOLD Mongolia project uses HER STORY campaign to highlight successful women ASGM miners
Below are two videos from the AGC-executed planetGOLD Mongolia project.
They launched a HER STORY campaign for Women’s Months to help elevated the stories of ASGM miners in Mongolia.