Together We Prosper - Grassroots Women Leadership & Social Capital Fostering Partnership for Resilient Communities in Uncertain Times s

In the past 4 years, women living in poor communities need to respond and adapt to two major global crises, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, which are intersecting to increase inequalities across the world and gravely threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of grassroots women, their families and communities. Organised grassroots women-led organisations recognise that resilience building goes beyond climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction, and that community resilience building strategies need to have a multi-sectoral and integrative approach that considers all existing vulnerabilities and addresses multi-dimensional poverty, and that they cannot work on their own.

COVID-19 has been replicating inequalities, including recovery responses. It has been recognized the gender-sensitive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and how COVID-19 exposed pre-existing inequalities and exacerbated them. The COVID-19 impact was not gender-neutral and increased vulnerability and poverty among women, particularly of those living in poor urban, rural and indigenous communities. In addition to the socioeconomic and health related impact of covid in general, grassroots women have carried the burden of extreme caregiving.

Through local funding mechanisms such as Community Resilience Fund and applying the community risk mapping tool in building partnerships with local-regional governments and other partners, grassroots women were able to reduce the vulnerability of their communities to the impact of the pandemic, filling gaps in government’s management of the crisis and together contribute to sustainable human settlements. These grassroots women demonstrated their leadership in securing partnerships with governments to provide targeted emergency response, which become key to influence gender responsive recovery-related policies and distribution of resources.

This Networking event will focus on how building on their social capital of alliances and partnerships they build along the way, organised grassroots women and their members modeling how emergency response can be a platform for practical and impactful community organizing and innovation - policy advocacy expanded and integrated to emphasize caregiving and the care economy as a pivot for risk reduction; challenging gender-based violence; and forging a grassroots platform for social protection and gender just recovery strategies. Models of the partnerships between women-led grassroots groups with other stakeholders will highlighting different themes using a range of methodologies and tools that not only are continued and sustain, but also empower the constituent group.

It will focus on the Dialogue 3 theme "Stronger Together" with examples that showcase how the innovations are sustain to contribute to SDG11, 5, and 13.