Learning Tools

“The first time I attended Grassroots Academy was in 2008 in Cebu City, Philippines— I was so proud and inspired to learn about the different practices from women from different countries.   It motivated me to be a leader in a wider network, and to take part in a global organization.”-
Jhocas  Castillo, DAMPA, Philippines

Grassroots Academies (GA) are events where many grassroots organizations meet as learners and teachers to exchange successful community development and resilience strategies, discuss barriers, and make policy recommendations with the support of partners. Grassroots academies can strengthen partnerships and multiply the impact of local practices by involving mainstream actors—NGOs, government, funders, academia, and private sector partners—in interactive analysis and problem-solving sessions. In 2006, the Grassroots Academy Methodology won the Dubai International Best Practices Award for Sustainable Development. The Huairou Commission facilitates grassroots academies prior to each major global conference, where grassroots women come to participate as stakeholders. In this way, through the GAs, grassroots women consolidate their collective position and priorities.

Grassroots Academy convened on May 13-14, 2019 at the UN DRR biennial Global Platform for DRR highlighted the need to accelerate implementation of government commitments to community-led inclusive disaster risk reduction and engagement of architects of climate finance systems to explore the creation of financial mechanisms that resource poor people’s organizations to accelerate local climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction. The discussion engaged the complex range of risks and vulnerabilities faced by grassroots women, the strategic role of grassroots risks assessment as learning and advocacy tools, grassroots driven urban and rural strategies for climate resilient agriculture, food security, livelihood diversification, emergency preparedness, disaster response, recovery and negotiating partnerships. The final session of the Academy included a dialogue with the Executive Director of CEPREDANAC and the World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development, who carried grassroots leaders’ recommendations into the GPDRR plenary session on women’s leadership in advancing resilience.

“I learned about the community mapping through our work on the HIV-AIDS. Grassroots women were mapping and in depth analyzing the magnitude of the epidemic impact on the community.  They drew on the indigenous knowledge that existed in previous days to solve problems and to harmonize all of this they conducted community feedback meetings.”- Violet Shivutse, Shibuye, Kenya

Facilitated by SWID, Uganda, grassroots women used risk mapping tools to identify climate vulnerabilities in rural and urban communities that were related to flood, droughts, food insecurity, poor sanitation etc. Following this mapping, 130 grassroots women have been formally appointed as risk experts by the Jinja Municipality. They were remunerated to address issues of urban flooding through planning and improved drainage systems.

Community mapping is a versatile participatory research tool that can be used to map various development risks and vulnerabilities alongside  resources. It raises awareness, informs decision-making and engages community members in a structured learning, documenting and analysis process. Armed with conclusions based on research, mapping empowers grassroots women as knowledge creators and leaders. Mapping is used to gather local data and mobilize community members and other stakeholders to identify and address community needs together through collective advocacy and action planning. Mapping and risk assessments’ findings are frequently utilized in Local to Local dialogue sessions with local government officials to discuss community development priorities and lobby for priority actions.

After risk mapping convened in seven communities in Mirpur, Dhaka district, grassroots women from Participatory Development Action Platform in Bangladesh presented their findings and collectively written community action plans to the government authorities through local to local dialogues. The local Ward Counselors committed to support the leaders in implementing the action plans. In the following years, the authorities involved women in various community development activities, including working with women leaders to provide nutrition for the malnourished children and pregnant women.

Since the COVID-19 crisis, grassroots women leaders in Guatemala working with Fundación Guatemala have formed monitoring groups to track community member’s access to and delivery of government social stipends to the entitled poor community households. The women work to prepare community reports on bonuses’ delivery. They also coordinate with national authorities responsible for distribution of the stipends over the real situation of social bonus access in communities. In this regard, they reach out to entitled community members to make sure they undergo the necessary procedure to claim their stipends.

In addition, the grassroots women leaders work to provide responsible authorities with regular updates regarding the dynamic of community risks and vulnerabilities elevated by the corona virus pandemic, highlighting changes over time. In this regard, the women make sure that entitlements stay up to date with the needs.

Community monitoring groups, sometimes known as Watch-Dog groups or Vigilance Committees, is a collective community approach to institutional accountability and transparency. Watch-Dog groups serve to ensure that women’s rights to land and property are protected, they promote institutional accountability against illegal practices, such as land grabbing, or crimes against women. In addition, this collective community action empowers women to challenge cultural norms that are damaging to their welfare, such as repossession of land and property. The Watch-Dog groups were first introduced as an accountability tool by grassroots women in Kenya who mobilized to ensure land justice to women and to secure their tenure against land grabbing and repossession.

“Cry with one eye open” is a saying widely known among widows in Nairobi, Kenya, where MLAHARA works through community watch-dog groups to ensure that women’s rights to land are protected.

Mostly consisting of grassroots women, who receive community paralegal training, the groups also include village elders, local administration officials and local Land Board members to liaise with institutions and village councils to obtain land ownership or security of tenure certificates and to ensure institutional protection of land rights of women. Before the Watch-Dog groups, one local community had 32 land dispossession cases open for 5-12years, meanwhile leaving women without security of tenure. Within the first year of Watch-Dog groups , 12 cases were solved within the community through remedial mechanisms, 5 cases were resolved in court while the community saw a 65% drop in annual repossession cases. Liaising with administrative institutions, they aid quicker resolution of open cases. Institutions become more open to collaborating with communities. Grassroots women position themselves as experts in land and property rights, and, as a result, they get invited to become members of the district level land control boards.

“We created  an approach called the leadership support process,  where we learned how to work with each other. We learned how to set basic agreements for organizing. We learned how to respect each other. And we took time to really look at what each other was doing on the ground in their communities”. –
Jan Peterson, co-founder of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women and the Huairou Commission

The Leadership Support Process (LSP) is an authentic grassroots women’s leadership capacity building and support model. LSP tools are simple but powerful, practical ideas and methods that support grassroots women as they become more effective advocates for themselves and their communities. The Leadership Support Process utilizes techniques and methods of grounding to ensure attentive, active and respectful listening and participation in group meetings, which in turn set the stage for productive and empathetic organizing. It also helps to promote leadership and personal commitments balance among grassroots women by helping them to ground in here and now. LSP builds strong organizations, partnerships and movements by developing connected, reflective and empowered individual leaders.

“Seemingly simple things, like sitting in circles during meetings, establishing basic agreements, including “no put downs” of oneself or others, allocating equal speaking time, asking thought out questions for both – personal and community work check ins, identifying a group leader to facilitate and hold the group accountable to the agreed upon time limits, content and format questions, truly transformed our capacity to learn from each other and grow as leaders.”
– Lisel Burns , co-founder of the Neighborhood Women’s Leadership Support Process