As we look back on a productive2017and look forward to even better 2018, we are pleased to share somehighlightswith you.
The year has seen an expansion ofWOCAN‘s membership and clients, as well as areas of collaboration with new partners around the globe. We are grateful to our donors, clients, friends and colleagues for their continuing collaboration, enthusiasm and willingness to engage in our global work to advance women’s empowerment and gender equality for the benefit of rural women, in particular, in developing countries.
Globally, the year brought a new awareness (particularly here in the US) of persistent gender discrimination; it also brought heightened attention to gender in relation to climate change, and to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
New talking points, new actors expressing their commitment to women’s empowerment and the end of gender discrimination…but how do we know this will produce the results we are hoping for? Now more than ever there is a need for measurement frameworks – mechanisms that allow the public and consumers to have confidence that companies and indeed, climate project implementers, are delivering benefits to the women of the communities they rely on for supply chains and climate actions.
WOCAN‘s award-winning W+ Standard for women’s empowerment (www.wplus.org) has gained recognition and generated excitement amongst a group of companies, project managers and investors that have come to know about it through dozens of global, regional and local events where we have been invited to present it. Presentations at three events of the New York Climate Week and the COP23 last year highlighted our new partnership with the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), to bring a new product into the carbon markets: Verified Carbon Units jointly labelled under both the VCS and W+ standards. “W+ Labeled VCUs” offer the opportunity for the generation of co-benefits for women’s empowerment, providing a way for carbon project developers to differentiate their units, with a premium price that is shared with community women and for companies, investors and individuals to simultaneously contribute to SD goals for gender equality and climate action. We anticipate the first sale of co-labelled credits in early 2018.
As the W+ continues to capture the interests of a broader range of organizations and leaders, we have developed new methods to measure changes in women’s Education & Knowledge; applied the Standard to a financial inclusion program of a bank in Vietnam; measured women’s income and knowledge in communities in rural Morocco; revised the W+ standard documents, and broadened the expertise within the W+ Advisory Council. We have advised gender lens investors and bilateral and multi-lateral donors on how to use the W+ to measure (and design for) project results, and engaged directly with private sector organizations who are new to the integration of gender in projects and programs.
As new actors become committed, due to their stated interests in SDG #5 for women’s empowerment/gender equality, there is, by necessity, a need for capacity strengthening.WOCANhas had a busy year of providing training on gender integration, through our partnership with the Swedish government, for their partners in the Asia/Pacific region, and for several UN agencies requesting training courses on gender integrated planning. We expect this to increase in 2018, in Africa as well as in Asia/Pacific, as more investors and donors hold their investees accountable for results in accordance with gender policies.
We look forward to 2018 as a year of increased applications of the W+ Standard and market demand for W+ credits, and increased demands forWOCAN‘s technical services for capacity development, research and advice from both old and new partners, in an expanding number of sectors and types of organizations, both public and private.
Please join our community (www.wocan.org) as we embark on finding and delivering new and innovative approaches to gender inequality together. Stay tuned for some exciting developments!
Warm Wishes,
The WOCAN Team