RESILIENCE THROUGH EMPOWERMENT

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RESILIENCE THROUGH EMPOWERMENT

• Suranjana Gupta
• Huairou Commission
• Consultative Meeting Global Network of NGOs on
  Disaster Risk Reduction
• ISDR
• Geneva, Switzerland
• October 2006

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Huairou Commission

• Created in Beijing 1995
• Experimental partnership entity of grassroots
  womens organizations, NGOs, Donors, Local
  Authorities
• Focus Grassroots women and settlements
• 5 Global Campaigns Governance, Secure Tenure,
  HIVAIDS, Peace and Resilience Building
• Groots International taken the lead in this
  thematic campaign

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Key Elements of Our Approach

• Casting women in the role of partners
• Mobilizing community based organizations
• Putting information in the hands of women.
• Creating safe spaces for women and children
• Making institutions responsive and accountable to
  communities.
• Restoring, diversifying and upgrading livelihoods
  to collective enterprise
• Transferring innovations through peer exchange

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How do we build resilient communities?

• Social networks, community based organizations
  are strengthened
• Improved access to basic services eg. ASHAA
• Sustained participation in development
  continuous and refining of skills and knowledge
  enabling them to mobilize these in a crisis.
• Institutional accountability to communities

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Challenges in risk reduction programs

• Community resilience building is seen as
  emergency response one-time training
• Women are bypassed because social barriers
  prevent them from public spaces and planning.
• Community involvement ends when projects end
• Capacities left behind in communities are usually
  confined to hardware
• Difficult to get communities interested in
  disaster, particularly where disasters are
  infrequent.

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Groots-AJWSGlobal Initiative to Strengthen
Community Trainers

• 1. Global network of women trainers in Asia and
  Latin America and Caribbean with expertise in
• Organizing and training disaster response teams
• Building federations of livelihoods groups to
  access credit and markets
• Disaster safe construction teams
• Improving institutional accountability and access
  to basic services
• Teaching other communities
• 2. Refining community tools and methodologies
  for transferring innovation

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Why is this initiative exciting?

• Recognition to grassroots women leaders as
  experts.
• Opportunities for communities to reflect on and
  articulate practices and develop methodologies to
  transfer these.
• Located on the disaster-development intersection,
  thus relevant to communities even when disaster
  is not an immediate concern
• The potential to rapidly scale up community
  innovations in recovery and resilience

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Using grassroots expertise to support womens
participation in Sri Lanka 2007

• Partnering with International Center for
  Sustainable Cities with funding from CIDA to
  mobilize women to plan and manage 3 women and
  childrens centers
• Partnering with UN Habitat to enhance womens
  participation in 5 cities

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How can policy makers support community-driven,
women centered resilience?

• Set standards and operational guidelines for
  womens participation in DRR.
• Provide resources to integrate DRR with ongoing
  development processes and priorities of
  grassroots women.
• Create a demand for community trainers pre and
  post disaster.
• Convene forums which provide opportunities for
  communities to convey lessons learned to policy
  makers.