In a competitive bidding process, WOCAN was selected to provide knowledge and capacity strengthening for project teams and country counterparts of the World Bank’s program PROGREEN – (the Global Partnership for Sustainable and Resilient Landscapes) to enhance activities within integrated landscape projects and programs that empower women, that are measurable and measured, and lead to direct benefits for women and vulnerable community members.
To address this objective, WOCAN will train project teams in selected countries to design activities and measure women’s empowerment results using the W+ Standard. This will inform country counterparts implementing integrated landscape programs as to specific women’s empowerment activities appropriate in their settings and ways of measuring and monitoring improvement.
PROGREEN – the Global Partnership for Sustainable and Resilient Landscapes, is a World Bank managed Umbrella Trust Fund that supports countries’ efforts to improve livelihoods while tackling declining biodiversity, loss of forests, deteriorating land fertility, and increasing risks such as uncontrolled forest fires, which are exacerbated by a changing climate.
The Gender and Vulnerability initiative under PROGREEN’s Global Program seeks to strengthen capacity of country project teams to design and test innovative mechanisms for empowering women. Demand for capacity, advice and technical assistance in this area needs to be demand-driven from country teams and client counterparts where there is a ‘fit’ with agricultural and forest landscape initiatives planned or underway (and are receiving operational support from the World Bank). Such demand for innovative funding mechanisms and project activities that empower women and other vulnerable groups will be strengthened by awareness and targeted capacity building efforts that make project teams aware of the opportunities and existing mechanisms, such as internationally recognized standards and certifications, that both measure and reward women’s empowerment outcomes. The work will have resonance and value also for country project teams under the Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR) Impact Program, managed by the World Bank and funded by the GEF.
Objective
The overall goal of the activity is to provide knowledge and strengthen capacity of project teams and country counterparts to include activities within integrated landscape projects and programs that empower women, are measurable and measured, and lead to direct benefits for women and vulnerable community members. This will inform country counterparts implementing integrated landscape programs as to specific women’s empowerment activities appropriate in their settings and ways of measuring and monitoring improvement.