RECOFTC
WAVES

WAVES - Weaving Leadership for Gender Equality 2019–2022

Weaving Leadership for Gender Equality

RECOFTC believes that gender equality will lead to more equitable resource management and healthier, more resilient forests. Increased women's participation will lead to improvements in local natural resource governance, conservation efforts and sustainable livelihoods, contributing to lives lived with security and dignity.

Launched in March 2019, WAVES was funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). 

Results 

Our WAVES initiative has built a network of gender leaders from seven countries and has supported them as they advocated for equality and led gender-mainstreaming programmes in their communities and institutions. 

The leaders that WAVES supported include technical experts, senior government officials, politicians, academics, directors and officers of civil society organizations, local community leaders, business managers and journalists. They came from Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand and Viet Nam. Most are women. Brief profiles of 26 of these leaders are online here.

Examples of progress under the WAVES program included: 

  • In Indonesia, a gender leader changed her organization’s rule that pregnant women could not attend training, and set up a day-care facility for trainees’ children. 
  • Another Indonesian leader integrated gender issues into her university’s forestry curriculum. 
  • In Cambodia, gender leaders influenced the country’s gender action policy and strategy. 
  • In Nepal, WAVES support enabled participants to develop a plan to cultivate 300 gender leaders in their field over the next two years through training, webinars and career counselling.
  • In Viet Nam, a company director changed the company’s policies to be more gender-sensitive and ensured equality by including the names of both husband and wife in legal contract documents.
  • In Lao PDR, gender leaders from government and local organizations have strengthened institutional capacity for using a gender-integrated database system for FLEGT and REDD+ program planning.
  • In Thailand, WAVES training helped women in local forest networks to take on leadership positions and make decisions for their communities.
  • In Myanmar, WAVES facilitated online gender dialogues that link to community forestry policy and decision-making processes.

Find out more

Read about the 2019 to 2022 WAVES evaluation.

Contact info@recoftc.org to learn more about the WAVES initiative and to collaborate.