WEDO is glad to announce the second round of recipients of direct funding from the Gender Just Climate Solutions (GJCS) Scale Fund (see the pilot round awardees here). The recipients represent innovative, scalable, gender-just climate solutions from Cameroon, Bangladesh, Turkey, Democratic Republic of Congo, Argentina and Guatemala. 

Launched in 2021 at the Generation Equality Forum with partners WECF, WEP, and FEMNET, the GJCS Scale Fund supports the scaling, replication and ambition of gender just climate solutions globally. With pooled resources from women’s rights organizations and groups, this re-grant collective builds on decades of ongoing feminist mobilizing for climate solutions. The Scale Fund aims to support a range of activities driven forward by feminists within the broader landscape of the Gender Just Climate Solutions, including supporting previous GJCS awardees and honorees and WORTH Initiative grantees.

The GJCS Scale Fund supports key activities, such as strategic planning and capacity strengthening, to better position recipients’ solutions for scaling and/or replication in other communities.

Read more about each organization’s work below.

Community Agricultural and Environmental Protection Association (CAEPA) Cameroon is a women-led and focused rights organization founded in 2009 by a group of women seeking to improve their agricultural production systems while making them environmentally friendly and sustainable. On realizing the linkages between natural resource rights and climate and environmental justice—as well the connection between land degradation, poverty, and violence against women and people living with HIV and AIDS—their activities have expanded to address the connections between climate and environmental justice and freedom from violence for women and girls.

The GJCS Scale Fund will serve as an opportunity for CAEPA to develop a five-­year strategic plan for 2023–2027. It will enable CAEPA to review its vision and mission and strategize to serve its constituency better.

Feminist Network Bangladesh attempts to recognize links between sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and climate change to create an effective adaptive response to climate change, while also improving gender equality and access to SRHR services. The project developed four youth groups and one feminist network to advocate for the SRHR rights of climate-vulnerable women and girls, including through awareness raising toward challenging social taboos and superstitions. The feminist network has also focused on SRHR and climate through dialogue, collaboration, approaches, and processes among diverse stakeholders, including women-focused CSOs and those working on climate change, health, and women’s rights. With the project support, the network will continue its work at the national level to better understand the linkages between sectors and align efforts to generate effective policies and programs with decision-makers and climate change, humanitarian, and gender equality advocates.

The network has already taken advocacy initiative through national level dialogue on:

• Promoting gender-transformative climate action by addressing the linkages between climate change and SRHR across climate action processes
• Setting targets for inclusive, gender-balanced, multi-sectoral stakeholder participation in climate policy
• Increasing investment in health systems to address the underlying causes of vulnerability to climate change
• Promoting sexual education at the secondary school level.

The GJCS Scale Fund will support Feminist Network Bangladesh’s advocacy initiatives on gender and climate change, as well as capacity strengthening for fundraising and communication efforts.

IMECE Turkey is a non-profit organization based in Izmir, Turkey that aims to support, educate and empower displaced people in the forgotten settlements of Turkey. Founded in 2014, IMECE was created with the intention of supporting local communities and shifted focus at the start of the “European Refugee Crisis” by implementing education and empowerment programs to create sustainable change.

PIFEVA (Pillar to Vulnerable Women Active in DR Congo) is a Congolese NGO supporting women and local communities against poverty and injustice. PIFEVA was created in June 2004 in Bukavu, in a context characterized by repeated wars, widespread poverty, malnutrition and hunger, climate change, violence against women, and discrimination against Indigenous women and girls in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

PIFEVA’s mission is to support Indigenous, vulnerable and marginalized women, children, young girls and local communities in the fight against poverty and injustice in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Our organization Pillar to Vulnerable Women Active in DR Congo – PIFEVA is pleased to receive direct funding from Round 2 of the Gender Just Climate Solutions Scale Fund for the production and dissemination of a resource document entitled: ‘Indigenous Women’s Knowledge and Practices in Climate Change Resilience in the Democratic Republic of Congo,'” said Project Lead Véronique Bulaya. “We hope and believe that the Scale Fund support will allow us to advance climate and gender justice through the documentation and sharing of valuable Indigenous knowledge and practices in climate change resilience among Indigenous women, youth, and future generations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

[In French | en français]:

“Notre organisation PILIER AUX FEMMES VULNERABLES ACTIVES – PIFEVA est heureuse de bénéficier le financement du Fonds à l’échelle des Solutions Genre et Climat Round 2 de financement direct pour la production et vulgarisation d’un document de référence intitulé: ‘Savoirs et pratiques des femmes autochtones dans la résilience aux changements climatiques en République Démocratique du Congo.’ Nous espérons et croyons que l’appui Scale Fund nous permettra de faire avancer la justice climatique et de genre par la documentation et le partage de précieux savoirs et pratiques autochtones résilients aux changements climatiques entre les femmes autochtones, les jeunes  et  les prochaines générations en République Démocratique du Congo. – Véronique Bulaya, Coordinatrice et chef du projet

Founded in 2001, Fundación Plurales has been working to promote local and regional development and networks of peasant and Indigenous women from the American Chaco region of Argentina. The organization’s work includes carrying out projects for access to safe water, bringing technologies and knowledge closer to social inclusion, and facilitating dialogues as a means of influencing the public. They support, guide and accompany people and groups in the different dimensions of free, supportive, comprehensive, inclusive, and multidimensional human development.

The GJCS Scale Fund will support Fundación Plurales in strengthening their Environmental Defense Program, specifically by helping to create tools to evaluate sustainability mechanisms and examining the intervention model. Fundación Plurales will also promote a collective strategy between Plurales and rural and indigenous women’s organizations to follow tentative lines of work for funding and seeking opportunities.

Foundation Todos Juntos supports community-driven health, education, social work, and environmental projects that uplift and honor the history and culture of families and individuals living in the western highlands of Guatemala. ​

Through the GJCS Scale Fund, Todos Juntos aims to build resilient communities through the implementation of two programs that complement each other: Gusarina, which focuses on empowering women living in food-insecure conditions by implementing mealworm farms adapted to current climatic conditions such as rising temperatures and low water availability; and Bienes Forestales, which works to safeguard ecological and ancestral ecological knowledge as tools for resilience, resistance and reconnection with nature.