Testimony – what is it like being a winner of the Gender Just Climate Solutions award?

“The award winners annual meetings continue to be the highlight of the year in our lives and to rejuvenate our energies to continue to strive for gender-just climate solutions”. Bertha Chiroro is the Senior Project Coordinator at GenderCC – Southern Africa – a non-governmental organisation that works for women’s rights and gender justice. Here is her testimony about how it is to be a Gender Just Climate Solutions award winner:

“From the first time when we were winners, our work as GenderCC – Southern Africa has continued to be validated and giving us so much recognition in our country. The mentoring workshops, the tips we receive from the mentoring workshops, has continued to make such a positive difference in our work with our different partners, the communities that we work with and the different stakeholders. We have now gained the respect and the accolades of the policy makers in our country such that we are always consulted in order to make inputs on gender-responsive climate change policies. Each year I learn new things and new tools that assist me in doing our work differently and in scaling up our gender-just climate Initiatives.”

GenderCC – Southern Africa – won the Gender Just Climate Solutions award in 2015 in the category “non-technical solutions” that appraises initiatives that deals with capacity-building and social improvements. Their grassroots women’s initiative focused on uplifting women out of poverty by empowering them to manage and use natural resources and contributed to sustainable livelihoods whilst being resilient to climate change. The project trained 350 women from 7 communities in 3 provinces and had 2100 indirect beneficiaries. The improved access to water and energy for the rural communities led to the formation of successful agricultural cooperatives.

Bertha is currently part of an ongoing mentoring programme of previous winners led by us, the Women & Gender Constituency and the UNFCCC Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN).

Bertha Chiroro participating in a training workshop by Women & Gender Constituency on speaking to delegates during COP25 in Madrid, December 2019. (Photo credit: Annabelle Avril / WECF)

Learn more about their inspiring work: gendercc.org.za

 

By | 2023-03-13T08:35:18+00:00 February 18th, 2020|Advocacy, Climate, News, Our stories, WECF|0 Comments