Grassroots Women Open and Shape the 4th CRPP Partnership Forum in Bangkok
Bangkok, Thailand – Nine members and five staff members from the Huairou Commission joined partners and stakeholders at the 4th Community Resilience Partnership Program (CRPP) Partnership Forum in Bangkok, hosted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Focused on climate-resilient livelihoods approaches to delivering locally led adaptation at scale, the Forum provided space for learning, sharing, and strategic networking – with grassroots women at its center.
Ika Rachmani, a grassroots leader and Huairou member from Yakkum Emergency Unit, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, officially opened the Forum with a call for grassroots women to be recognized and engaged as strategic partners in building community resilience to climate change. Her framing set the tone for two days of dialogue: in opening remarks, UK FCDO’s John Warburton directly referenced her message, acknowledging Huairou’s role in building grassroots women’s leadership capacities. ADB similarly affirmed that communities are active agents of change who must be given equal partnership.
Huairou members from Nepal and India presented alongside Ika, highlighting the leadership role of grassroots groups and cooperatives across three interconnected areas: mapping climate risks and vulnerabilities and developing context-specific, risk-informed practices through the Community Resilience Fund; strengthening women’s access to human and financial capital through leadership development, technical skills-building, and financial product differentiation; and designing and leading climate-resilient livelihood models at scale in collaboration with government partners from local to national level.
Huairou’s team also held direct meetings with the National Government of Nepal and the Government of Indonesia to explore how community action can be integrated into government program design, planning, and monitoring; and to lay groundwork for national dialogues grounded in CRPP evidence.
The Forum generated significant momentum and learning for Huairou’s ongoing work, with the team returning focused on: addressing climate migration and its impact on grassroots women; exploring collaborations to strengthen community capacities; aggregating impact for scale; implementing livelihoods frameworks that can anticipate, absorb, adapt, and transform in response to climate shocks; developing technology based on farmers’ needs; and scaling the work of women-led cooperatives and farmer producer organizations.
About the CRPP
The Community Resilience Partnership Program (CRPP) is helping countries and communities in the Asia and Pacific region scale up investments in climate adaptation, especially investments at the community level, that explicitly target the nexus of climate, poverty, and gender.
Learn more at: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/747666/crpp-brochure-2026.pdf