Insights from Fostering Women’s Leadership & Collaboration for Community Resilience and how it strengthen economic & social competencies of grassroots women as leaders and entrepreneurs in community led resilient development.

1. Insights from Fostering
Women’s Leadership &
Collaboration for
Community Resilience
Swayam Shikshan Prayog
www.sspindia.org
16th October, 2014

2. Mission
Strengthen economic & social competencies of
grassroots women as leaders and entrepreneurs
in community led resilient development
Focus Areas
Clean Energy,
Food Security & Agriculture and
Health, Water & Sanitation
5 lakh
households
/year
4States
Maharashtra, Gujarat,
Tamil Nadu and Bihar
SWAYAM SHIKSHAN PRAYOG
Ecosystem Support
Skill-building, Rural Marketing,
Social Finance

3. Theory of Change
SSP relies on a two-pronged theory of change
Resilient women leaders build resilient communities
Resilient communities trigger pro-active state action for disaster
resilience.
To ensure grassroots women succeed as champions of community disaster resilience, they
need access to:
1. Knowledge capital: or basic technical training and handholding; disaster risk reduction,
disaster response, recovery and long-term resilience;
2. Financial capital: or access to modest financial resources to enable actual piloting of their
community resilience ideas;
3. Social capital- or recognition from local and state governments as real partners in taking
community-based disaster resilience forward.

4. CCA & Agriculture…
CCA and Agriculture
Organized women farmers map and identify
the risk around agriculture practice, water &
land
Trained more than 5000 women farmers on different
advanced technology required for climate risk reduction
Facilitate learning's between experience
farmers & Agri experts with women
farmers
Partnerships with Agriculture Department
& University
Innovative fund support to poor women

5. Strategy for Building Community Resilience

6. Community Resilience Led by Women Leaders
Differences Between Traditional Disaster Reduction and Women-Led Climate
Resilience
Traditional Methods of Disaster
Reduction
Community Disaster Resilience Led by
Women Leaders
1. Grassroots women identified primarily as
vulnerable groups.
1. Grassroots women identified as active agents
of resilience.
2. Organizing advocacy as secondary to disaster-focused
actions.
2. Organizing advocacy as crucial for grassroots
women to advance their priorities.
3. Invest in physical resource base. 3. Investments in social and political resources as
key to strengthening resource base
4. Short-term action to protect existing
resources.
4. Sustained long-term action to accumulate and
protect resources
5. Resources and agenda-setting is with
government.
5. Resources are allocated to grassroots
organizations.

7. Community Disaster Resilience Led by Women
Traditional Methods of Disaster
Mitigation
Leaders
Community Disaster Resilience Led by Women
Leaders
1. Grassroots women identified primarily
as vulnerable groups.
Views grassroots
women as a vulnerable group and as
victims, thus marginalizing them from
decision-making, and reproducing
vulnerabilities
1. Grassroots women identified as active agents of resilience.
Views vulnerability as structural and seeks to redress it by positioning
grassroots women as active agents of resilience by incorporating their
knowledge, practices and networks into resilience programs. Actions
that support this perspective include:
 Setting standards for engaging grassroots women’s organizations
in the design, implementation and evaluation of risk reduction,
relief, recovery, reconstruction, and risk reduction programs
 Formalizing public roles of grassroots women’s groups in
resilience programs as information managers who can enable
information flow between communities and authorities, and
create a demand for resilience.
2. Organizing advocacy as secondary to
disaster-focused actions.
Perceives grassroots organizing and
engagement with decision makers as
secondary to or separate from resilience-building
activities, which are often narrowly
defined.
2. Organizing advocacy as crucial for grassroots women to
advance their priorities.
Perceives mechanisms for grassroots organizing and engagement
with decision makers as crucial for advancing grassroots women’s
strategic resilience priorities

8. Community Disaster Resilience Led by Women
Traditional Methods of Disaster
Mitigation
Leaders
Community Disaster Resilience Led by
Women Leaders
3. Invest in physical resource base.
Invests primarily in building, protecting and
strengthening communities’ physical resource base
(e.g.- housing and Infrastructure)
3. Investments in social and political resources as key to
strengthening resource base.
Invests in strengthening grassroots women’s leadership,
organization and institutional partnerships as key to
building, protecting and strengthening communities’
resource base.
4. Short-term action to protect existing
resources.
Focuses mainly on protecting resources through
emergency preparedness, response and early warning
programs.
4. Sustained long-term action to accumulate and protect
resources.
Promotes strategies that bundle the accumulation of
resources with the protection of resources through ongoing
development initiatives, recognizing that the poor
communities with limited resources are motivated to take
sustained action that help them accumulate and protect
their resources.
5. Resources and agenda-setting is with government.
Resources flow primarily through governments or non-governmental
organizations that set priorities for action
at local levels.
5. Resources are allocated to grassroots organization.
Allocates resources that go directly to grassroots women’s
organizations so that they act on local priorities,
demonstrating their capacities to build resilient
communities.

9. Recommendations
INTERNAL EXTERNAL
• Developing a decision-making,
governance structure
• Systematizing and scaling up
grassroots practice and knowledge
• Claiming our work as resilience and
DRR
• Linking DRR and poverty reduction
to climate change and impacting the
policies
• Formalize women’s roles as agents
of climate resilience in designing,
implementing and monitoring
resilience
• Bridging local, national and global
initiatives and developing local
platforms on which women drive
resilience programs
• Set up Community Resilience Funds
so that women’s groups can
experiment with innovative
resilience strategies and transfer
effective strategies through peer
exchange and training.

10. Thank You