FEATURED ORGANIZATIONS
ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED IN THIS GENDER JUSTICE MOVEMENT
WOMAN'S EARTH ALLIANCE
The Women’s Earth Alliance is a nonprofit organization that works for a better future through women’s empowerment. It’s primary goal is to promote planetary health around the globe, and it does so through women, as it believes this is the most efficient and beneficial way to achieve this. The WEA’s primary work is partnering with local grassroots organizations, looking for active or potential women leaders within a community, and offering them the training and resources they need to succeed. The organization has trained over a million people in 20 countries, and helped communities prosper economically and sustainably. Projects have included helping women start NGOs, leadership training, and making drinking water safer, all achieved by women within the community.
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(Pictured Left:These women were involved in developing the first ever accelerator program in the U.S. through a partnership with the Women’s Earth Alliance and OAEC.)
NAVDANYA
Navdanya is an organization with the mission to empower communities no matter their religion, cast, sex, groups, landless people, small and marginal farmers, deprived women and children or any person in need to ensure that they have food, live in a healthy environment, and be self-sustainable through the use of natural resources. Navdanya strives to meet these goals through conservation, renewal and rejuvenation of the gifts of biodiversity from nature. They do this through setting up seed banks that are available to local farmers and small agricultural producers. Navdanya and its founder, Dr. Vandana Shiva, also works to prop women in third world countries and create diverse teams of women to accomplish goals. Lastly, it has an educational center set up to teach farmers about sustainable agriculture. An informational video about the classes can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKOw6eyhv9I .
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(Pictured to the left: Three women in India holding a sign that says "Farmers lives matter".)
GREEN BELT MOVEMENT
The Green Belt Movement was established by Wangari Maathai in 1977. Before founding this movement, Maathai was a board member and Chairman of the Board for Kenya’s Environment Liaison Center, which worked with the United Nations to oversee international environmental efforts in Kenya. She was already deeply involved in environmentalist action when her husband ran for Parliament in 1974, promising jobs, and she combined this passion with her husband’s campaign: GBM (then Envirocare) would create jobs and combat deforestation by paying locals, mainly women, to plant and maintain trees. While other environmental organizations had worked in Kenya, GBM was unique in that it was fully driven and staffed by Kenyans. Initially, it was supported using Maathai’s personal funds, but began to receive funding from numerous other organizations focused on women and the environment. In just over 40 years GBM has restored thousands of acres of land by planting and maintaining trees, also providing an income for women who previously only performed unpaid domestic labor, centering Kenyan women in reforestation efforts.
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Pictured left: Kenyan women tend a tree nursery
WECAN INTERNATIONAL
Founded in 2013, WECAN International’s mission is “to engage women in policy advocacy, on-the-ground projects, direct action, trainings, and movement building for global climate justice.” They engage with other global women’s organizations and leaders, gender-focused and feminist groups to broaden their base and gain support for the movement of women’s climate justice.
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WECAN International wants to change the narrative behind climate change and create a sense of urgency that the world is currently lacking. They reject any practice that prevents the planet from healing, such as increased natural gas extraction, nuclear power plants, and mega-dams. WECAN recognizes that the institutional patriarchy makes it hard for women to implement their work towards gender justice, and works to give women across the world a voice.
WECAN hosts regional climate change solution trainings, organizes a variety of strikes and rallies across the world, creates educational materials about specific climate issues, and much more. They also have a very active blog to update followers on current climate change issues and ways that we can get involved.
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(Pictured left: WECAN International members at protest for the rights of Indigenous people)
WEDO
The WEDO, Women’s Environment and Development Organization, mission is to make sure women’s rights, economic and environmental justice, and continual development principles are known in the global and national programs and policies. The starter of the WEDO organization was congresswoman and feminist activist Bella Abzug. She started this in 1990.
Women’s Environmental and Development Organization have two main goals that they strive for. First one is for women to claim their own rights as leaders and making choices on topics that are linked to the environment and sustainable advancement. The second one is having good development plans, actions, and practices are gender-responsive, socially and environmentally fair and implemented. In 2017, WEDO had done training for over one hundred women in all different countries who are leaders in the environmental and climate change process. Later that year, they launched the first ever UNFCC gender action plan, which is also called GAP. In this video, you can find more information about the goals of the WEDO organization (https://youtu.be/YJ8PqAeF-Ek )
Pictured Left: These women are marching and calling for equailty and Justice change.