This October the Huairou Commission will be participating in a series of preparatory events that will enable a strong delegation of grassroots women and NGO leaders to share their work and insights in the biennial World Urban Forum, to be held this year in November in Nanjing, China. Beginning with a Grassroots Women's International Academy in Cebu City, Philippines and a consultative event with UN-Habitat in Thailand, the Huairou Commission delegation will focus on the impact of natural disasters on poor communities and how women's groups have organized to ensure their communities are both sustainable and more resilient to such crises. We ask that you join in our advocacy and contribute your thoughts over the next three months.

Empowering Grassroots Women to Build Resilient Communities: Grassroots Women's International Academy - October 22-27, Cebu City, Philippines

Lihok Philippina, Bantay Banay Neighborhood Watch Groups and the Municipality of Cebu City will host the Grassroots Women's Academy in collaboration with the Huairou Commission. The Academy will bring together up to 50 grassroots leaders, primarily from disaster-prone communities in Asia, including China, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Philippines. The overall design of the Academy is to enable and facilitate grassroots women to share practices, identify strategies for scaling up good practices, and consolidate a common framework on creating resilient communities.

The Academy is an opportunity to develop a learning grassroots women's platform on resilience in the region, as well as to develop a global advocacy agenda for disaster in the context of urbanization. The Academy will not only address those sectors directly impacted by disasters - housing, basic services, infrastructure and livelihoods - but also examine community organizing and negotiations with government, which are essential for increasing grassroots women's influence in disaster programming. The Academy will support grassroots women to analyze their development and disaster related efforts to create a common learning and advocacy agenda, which they can advance through the development of a regional networking platform.

Members of the Huairou Commission have developed a comprehensive plan of action that will garner and hold space for grassroots women to contribute to policy conversations and present recommendations as key stakeholders within this expanding network.

The Huairou Commission has identified the following four objectives for the Academy:

• To develop a framework on community resilience that is derived from and relevant to grassroots women's experiences, knowledge and concerns.
• To develop a learning and advocacy network of Asian grassroots women's organizations that transfer effective practices and collectively negotiate for government support
• To ascertain the extent to which government programs are responsive to grassroots women's resilience priorities
• To develop 3-5 strategic policy recommendations on the local implementation of HFA which grassroots women's groups can convey at upcoming policy forums

Pre-Event on Disaster Management - October 29-31, Bangkok Thailand

Hosted by the UN- Habitat Risk and Disaster Management Unit this event is functioning as a consultative and preparatory event for the World Urban Forum. The Huairou Commission has been asked to bring a small delegation to provide inputs and feedback into the two partner days. Each day the sessions will focus on a theme: rethinking emergencies; urban risk reduction; and climate change, conflict and cities. The three-day program will feature in-depth discussions focused on:

• Identifying gaps and inequalities that cause adaptation strategies to fail in fragile economic, social, environmental and spatial conditions,
• Compiling urban management tools, potential partners and social tools to give an idea of alternative and feasible adaptation strategies to narrow the widening gaps, and
• Developing a guideline/action plan UN-Habitat's future role in the context of human settlements in climate change.

World Urban Forum IV - November 3-6, Nanjing, China

At global conferences such as past World Urban Forums, the Huairou Commission has focused on balancing advocacy around a grassroots woman's empowerment agenda with its mandate of engendering the overall conference. At WUF IV, the Huairou Commission aims to support grassroots women to further the agenda of women's empowerment while maintaining the efforts of the mainstreaming gender mandate, in particular focused around disaster risk reduction (DRR).

The main theme of World Urban Forum IV is supported by six sub-themes. The theme of "Environmentally Harmonious Cities" is focusing on reducing urban poverty and addressing the challenge of slums by improving living conditions, protecting resources and achieving better access to basic urban infrastructure, such as water and sanitation. A special focus is on climate change and how it relates to cities' preparedness for disaster. "Socially harmonious cities: Inclusion, rights and equity for all" focuses on pro poor land rights versus unlawful forced evictions; adequate housing for all versus exclusive housing markets; city wide basic service provision versus service deprived neighborhoods.

Tuesday and Wednesday morning of the conference, the Huairou Commission will participate in the Daily Women's Caucus, in partnership with the Nanjing Women's Federation, to debrief and discuss the issues raised on the previous day. Additional events and sessions that the Huairou Commission delegation will participate throughout the week are as follows (Date and times are to be announced, unless otherwise noted):

Roundtables

The Huairou Commission will be represented by grassroots woman leader from Legazpi City, Philippines, in the Gender Roundtable, organized by the UN-Habitat Gender Mainstreaming Unit, which will discuss women in urbanization. The Huairou Commission representative will be presenting on grassroots women's work and messages from the Cebu City Academy around women building disaster resilient communities.

The Huairou Commission will also take part in the GLTN Roundtable, which will develop plans for implementing gender criteria that have emerged from the E-forum, as well as participate in the discussion about what upscaling means to Grassroots women.

Networking and Side Events

The Huairou Commission will lead a networking event, "Grassroots Women: At the Heart of Harmonious Cities," (November 5th 1400-1600, RmMR209) in collaboration with the government of Norway that will focus on grassroots women's contributions to building sustainable urban communities. Grassroots Women: At the Heart of Harmonious Cities, will give space to grassroots women from around the world to share innovative practices developed to secure their and their communities' access to land, housing and other assets, within the contexts of governance, disaster risk resilience, evictions and HIV/AIDS.

Huairou Commission's secretariat member, GROOTS International, will facilitate a Side Event on Grassroots Academies, especially highlighting the results of the Cebu City Academy, to demonstrate how grassroots women's groups are building harmonious and resilient cities in the face of increasing natural disasters. Results of past Academies will be shared to show the positive impacts of grassroots women's issues and strategies on human settlements, when transferred and brought to scale.

Women and Cities International will be hosting Linking Gender, Local Governance, and Violence Prevention. This workshop will focus on innovative tools to prevent violence at the local level: developing local government-community partnerships, doing women's safety audits and integrating violence prevention into government policy. After a brief introduction to these tools, we will break into small groups to discuss what tools have been used, and how to overcome barriers to effective action.

GLTN Gender Mechanism: Taking Gender Criteria Forward: The Huairou Commission is an active member of the UNHABITAT Global Land Tool Network and has worked extensively on the development of the Gender Mechanism, a set of criteria to determine the gender responsiveness of large scale land tools. This Side Event will review the criteria and determine ways of utilizing the criteria. A strong Huairou Commission delegation will take part.

GLTN Gender Mechanism: Upscaling Land Tools from the Women's Perspective: This Side Event will be a continuation of the previous days, to brainstorm on land tool upscaling form a grassroots Women's perspective.

Registration is still open for both of these trainings. If you have not yet registered for a training, visit: The UN Habitat WUF Training Events website

Tuesday, November 4th - The Huairou Commission will also be collaborating with the Institute for Housing Studies of the Netherlands, COHRE, and UN-Habitat on for the training on "Alternatives to Forced Evictions: Sustainable Settlement Strategies." Long time Huairou Commission member, Estrategia of Peru, will act as a trainer in this session.

Thursday, November 6th - The Huairou Commission will be participating in the Training Program at the WUF by facilitating a Local to Local Dialogue Training on November 6. The three-hour training will be led by grassroots and NGO leaders experienced in designing, implementing and following-up Local to Local Dialogues in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Trainers will include Frances Birungi Odong of UCOBAC, Uganda, Violet Shivutse and Jane Nyokabi of GROOTS Kenya, Rut Kolinska of the Czech Mother Centers, and Femie Duka of DAMPA, Philippines.

Registration is still open for the WUF IV. If you have not yet registered and plan on attending, please follow visit: UN Habitat WUF Registration

Visit the WUF Website Here!