Community Resilience Funds

Demonstrating how access to flexible finance increases community resilience and women’s leadership

The Community Resilience Funds (CRF) serve as an innovative and flexible finance mechanism to channel resources directly to grassroots women’s groups living in risk prone poor communities.

Initially piloted with grassroots women’s groups in India, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru in 2008; ten years later, groups in 21 countries have collaborated to show its importance as a tool for reducing their vulnerability to climate and disaster threats.

Leveraging the momentum of the Global Commission on Adaptation chaired by Ban Ki-Moon, Bill Gates and World Bank President Krystalina Georgieva, Huairou Commission is working with partners including Slum/Shack Dwellers International, donors and professional allies from financial, development and technical institutions to bring Community Resilience Funds to scale.

HC members work to strengthen capacities of poor peoples organizations, and collaborate with governments and financial institutions to establish operational mechanisms for supporting grassroots-led resilience.

HOW COMMUNITY RESILIENCE FUNDS WORK

The CRF is designed to support grassroots women’s groups to deliver effective pro-poor disaster risk reduction and resilience building practices and to collaborate with local and national governments to scale-up grassroots and women-led development initiatives.

Huairou Commission members are exposed to a wide range of natural hazards, as well as political instability, conflict and violence. Through mapping risks and collective planning, grassroots women’s groups are able to build community resilience with an understanding of how risk and vulnerability affect women.

CRF uses vary across contexts and organizations. While all groups adhere to operational guidelines established in 2011, each organization tailors the process to their local context, including procedures to manage, distribute and monitor the funds to ensure transparency, efficiency and accountability.

Huairou Commission members distribute the CRF to members of existing self-help groups (farmer/producer cooperatives, savings and credit groups, caregiver groups and informal housing and settlement associations) who live in impoverished rural and urban communities exposed to climate and disaster risks.

Community Resilience Funds Enable Organized Groups of Grassroots Women to…..

Collectively make plans and initiate strategies and practices that reduce vulnerabilities arising from climate and disaster threats. For example: climate resistant cropping, adaptive forms of managing water and sanitation to increase supply/and reduce health problems, land and environmental conservation (forest, coastal and soil protection ). Here the CRFs are distributed in the form of cash or goods and supplies (such as agricultural inputs).
Forge new collaborations and leverage additional resources from external partners to scale up or strengthen grassroots-led resilience practices. The CRF attracted new investments from partners in the form of cash, in-kind support such as seeds and other agricultural inputs, capital for women’s entrepreneurship, investment in collective assets such as basic infrastructure and services, capacity building opportunities and technical support, thus expanding and sustaining resilience building efforts.
Strengthen women’s leadership capacity. Activities developed emphasize action-based learning such as transfer of collective knowledge of risk, risk information tools, risk governance mechanisms, and capacity to negotiate with local authorities to advance community priorities, and focus on publicly positioning grassroots women as experts and leaders in the eyes of their own communities, government institutions, and other actors.
Extend gains beyond the reach of grassroots women’s movements to benefit the broader community through community-led risk mapping, power mapping, emergency preparedness, and climate change mitigation and adaptation practices. Mitigation and adaption practices are the entry points from which grassroots women transform their livelihoods, assets, and the environmental conditions of their homes and communities. They transform gender and power relationships at all levels. Through exercising collective power, grassroots women increase knowledge and confidence through peer learning, networking, and partnerships.

What makes the CRF unique

Example of Shibuye Community Health Workers, Kenya

In rural Kenya, Shibuye Community Health Workers is supporting communities living on lands that have been decimated by mining, logging, and land grabbing. The lands have lost agricultural productivity, damaged water catchment and increased exposure to risk of landslide. In 2016, Shibuye organized grassroots women in 5 communities to map risks and collectively plan and deliver resilience building actions. Additional communities were added in 2017 and 2018.

Shibuye’s grassroots groups have used CRF to improve soil pH, access to clean water, and secure land rights. They enhanced food and nutrition security and access to clean energy, and participation in forest management.

To access the funds, Shibuye members complete a form detailing their needs and how they plan to make use of the resources An independent committee of grassroots women reviews all applications and decides which applications go forward and whether support will be in the form of cash, tools or other purchased inputs.

Shibuye has leveraged the CRF to attract investments by the government. With support from Agricultural Extension Officers, CRF reached 1,600 farmers in 7 months to enhance their climate-smart agricultural practices and natural resources management. Shibuye also offered grassroots women alternatives to microfinance institutions by helping groups set up their own savings and credit schemes. Looking ahead, Shibuye is planning to organize 500 grassroots women farmers and resilience practitioners into a cooperative in order to lend larger sums of money to members, expand markets for farm produce, and act as a bridge between grassroots women and microfinance institutions.

In 2018, CRF:

Channelled 390,935 funds to HC member groups in Africa, Latin America and Asia
Supported 2675 women from poor urban, rural and indigenous communities to lead action strategies and and publicly advocate for resilience
Generated 294 community-led risk maps and analyses of governance systems
Convened 58 Local-to-local dialogues between grassroots women’s organizations and local authorities

Resilience Practices Supported by CRF

Climate and Agriculture

Resilient crop selection, intercropping and diversification
Seed improvement
Adaptive planting techniques
Organic farming
Ecological pest control
Composting
Innovative gardening, including urban, kitchen, sack and table gardening techniques

Integrated Natural Resources Management

Land restoration, soil protection and sustainable exploitation
Afforestation and reforestation
Plant nurseries
Indigenous seed recovery
Water management
Energy conservation and green energy production from animal manure
Waste management and recycling

Resilient Livelihoods & Economic Advancement

Organic traditional crafting
Organic fisheries practices and fish cultivation
Organic cattle, goat and chicken farming
Vegetable and fruit conservation
Sustainable community tourism
Organic tea making
Community savings and credits groups

Disaster Prevention and Preparedness

Mapping and assessing community level risks, vulnerabilities and resources
Risk informed preparedness and response planning
Early warning systems
Risk education and information sharing
Building partnerships with local and national DRR authorities
Integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment across all phases of disaster risk management and climate change adaptation plans