Advancing grassroots women's leadership in community resilience

The Huairou Commission is organizing a South Asia Planning Meeting on Advancing Grassroots Women’s leadership in Community Resilience in Kathmandu, Nepal from February 8- 11, 2010. Lumanti Support Group for Shelter has kindly agreed to host this meeting. We will use this meeting as an opportunity to undertake grassroots network building and planning, following up on key developments in the Resilience Campaign in 2008/09-- the Huairou Commission’s Grassroots Academy in Cebu in late 2008, the Community Disaster Resilience Fund and the ISDR Community Practitioner’s Platform.

These developments in the last year have created momentum and opportunities for us to scale up and strengthen our work in the South Asian region by expanding and consolidating our grassroots women’s network. A learning and action network in the region is vital to our ability to build a strong, informed constituency of grassroots groups who can scale up solutions and press for development, disaster risk reduction and adaptation programs that reduce impacts of disasters and climate change on poor communities.

As a result, the Huairou Commission together with Lumanti Shelter for Development are hosting this meeting to create a strategic plan for the region, design the Community Platform and expand the CDRF. Participants from our network in Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan are attending this meeting to build relationships and regional leadership capacity with a view towards developing a core group of leaders who can drive the network's program in the region and represent the region at the global level.