Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS) together with ForestAction organised a joint project meeting on September 11 2022 at Tewa, Dhapakhel to share the IDRC funded projects’ conceptual framing on Women’s Economic Empowerment and projects’ key achievements, issues and challenges. SIAS and ForestAction are implementing IDRC funded Co-production of Shock Resilient Business Ecosystems for Women Engaged Enterprises (CREW) and Economic empowerment of Women through forest solutions project respectively.
The first half of the session included the sharing and discussion on conceptual frameworks and in introducing the project. The Forestaction partners (HIMAWANTI, Association of Family Forest Owner’s Nepal (AFFON), Federation of Forest-based Industry and Trade-Nepal) also presented the project’s key achievements, learnings and challenges while SIAS partners (ARIA Solutions and Himalayan Bio Trade Limited (HBTL)) reflected the same in the second half of the session. The key clarification and detailed discussions followed the presentations. Lastly, Bhim Adhikari from IDRC shared his reflections about the project concept and the discussions and noted few challenges to be considered.
Maniram Banjade from SIAS shared about the conceptual framework for an ‘ecosystem for support’ approach in Women’s Economic Empowerment. He stressed that the project’s attention has been on how women can be benefitted and their space and agency can be improved; making the cooperatives more inclusive, gender responsive and bring women into leadership.
Kanchan Lama and Srijana Baral from ForestAction shared the Women Economic Empowerment framework adopted by WEE-FS project. They shared that the organisation started with their own reflection whether it is empowered to understand women’s voice and then developed a culture within organisation and in partners. Srijana Baral shared that the project has adopted empowering HHs as an entry for women’s empowerment and initiated couple training rather than training woman.
The discussion session was moderated by Naya Sharma Poudel (ForestAction) and Dil Khatri (SIAS) where the partners shared their reflections and questions to the action research projects conducted by both SIAS and ForestAction and their respective partners on improving cross-cutting participation, addressing the policy gaps, financing at the local level and making it sustainable.
Finally, Bhim Adhikari gave his remarks that the projects are in line with IDRC’s strategic thinking, understanding and on right track. He also appreciated the diverse partners collaboration and participation of grassroots’ organisation. He further stressed on focusing knowledge capture and publishing articles from the project in international journals stating that showcasing the project is equally important.
