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Grassroots Women Bring Breath of Fresh Air to World Urban Forum 3

July 6, 2006

From June 19 – 23, 2006 grassroots women from over 30 countries joined NGO professionals and institutional partners to form a Huairou Commission delegation of 250 women to the World Urban Forum 3 in Vancouver, Canada.  The World Urban Forum 3 was a global conference on urban sustainability hosted by UN Habitat and the Government of Canada that attracted 10,000 participants.  The Huairou Commission is a global coalition of networks and partners working to advance the work of grassroots women in creating sustainable communities.  

The delegation’s efforts enabled grassroots women to speak for themselves about their accomplishments in their communities: secure homes, day care centers run by local mothers, rebuilding of communities struck by disaster and partnerships with local governments, to name a few.  The group included slum dwellers, small farmers, indigenous women and women recovering from disaster and genocide.  Partners such as mayors, representatives of donor agencies, UN officials, researchers, parliament members, and United Cities and Local Governments joined the delegation’s activities and spoke in support of grassroots women’s activities.

 Members of the Huairou Commission organized 9 participatory panel discussions (Networking Events), had speakers in 3 high level Dialogues, organized one Roundtable and co-sponsored another, organized a Daily Women’s Caucus, and visibly claimed space with an exhibit of grassroots women’s Best Practices, a Marketplace of their handicrafts and a Booth for networking.  Grassroots women experts and their partners used these activites as platforms to make visible their expertise, knowledge and contributions in a broad range of development areas.

Analucy Bengochea, Coordinator of the Garifuna Emergency Committee of Honduras, stated, “With a delegation of 250 women, this was the first time in history that so many women participated in such a strong way at a UN Habitat event.”  More than having a numerous presence, the delegation presented consolidated recommendations and acted as a unified group with shared ideas and in representation of hundreds of thousands of other grassroots women leaders.

The Grassroots Women’s International Academy was without doubt the key to producing this unified delegation.  GROOTS International and the Huairou Commission developed the Academy several years ago as a pre-conference method for grassroots women to learn and teach with one another from their on the ground community experience and to organize to bring joint recommendations to larger global conferences.

184 of the 250 Huairou Commission delegates to the WUF3 participated  in the Grassroots Women’s International Academy the week prior to WUF3 at the University of BC in Vancouver.  They used participatory learning methods to share their local activities and programs with one another and developed concrete ideas for action.  Preliminary plans include a Latin American Grassroots Women’s International Academy, peer exchanges on collective savings, collective home-building, holding dialogues with local authorities, and an anti-eviction working group within the Huairou Land and Housing Campaign.

The delegation drew recommendations from their broad knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work, in their communities across the globe.  To truly achieve the themes of Partnership for Finance and Safety emphasized in the WUF3, the grassroots experts urged global institutions to make credit more accessible to grassroots women.  To develop Social Inclusion in Public Engagement and in Achieving the Millenium Development Goals, they called for international aid agencies to consult them in the redirecting of funds and programs meant to benefit their communities.  Another Actionable Idea was to create new funds for Peer Exchanges, public spaces and ongoing organizing that would allow communities to sustain, upscale and transfer their successful work.  Analucy Bengochea, from ethnic Garifuna communities of Honduras, received spirited applause from thousands when she read some of these recommendations at the closing ceremony of WUF3.

At the Women’s Roundtable on the Millennium Development Goals, women from poor communities in the South and the North spoke of their successful organizing to build social cohesion and erradicate poverty. 

Haydee Rodriguez, a rural producer in Nicaragua, told us how she organized with other women to collectively produce organic crops and and market their products, a strategy to reduce migration to overcrowded cities.  Andrea Laux of the German Mother Centers told her personal story of how isolated single mothers in a society with a declining birth rate came together to raise children in a community environment.  This method of recreating social cohesion in cities has spread widely across Europe. 

The UN Special Ambassador for the Millennium Development Goals in Asia and the Pacific Erna Witoelar moderated the discussion of grassroots panelists and partner responders from the Ford Foundation, Harvard and United Cities and Local Governments. 

Srilata Batliwala, from the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University reminded us, “There is a myth that grassroots means small things and small impact.  We see here 800 mother centers, 23,000 herbal gardeners . . . there is nothing small about the resources they bring to their communities!”  She argued that if we were to do an economic study of grassroots women’s unpaid work toward the MDGs, it might equal the amount spent globally arms.  With this amount calculated, “they [grassroots women] could demand that at least 50% of the money being spent on Millennium Development Goals be put into their work.”

In addition to their accomplishments at the Academy, the grassroots organizations in the delegation bring home concrete wins from their networking at WUF3:  funds were leveraged for their work on AIDS,  follow-up meetings with policy-makers will soon be convened, and dialogues with partner institutions on disaster management are in the planning.  Grassroots leaders developed new relationships with national ministers on housing and other areas, as a result of their visibility at the WUF3. 

The Huairou Commission delegation entered the WUF3 as a breath of fresh air, bringing Actionable Ideas that are tried and true.  Their efforts well recognized in newspapers, on TV and public radio, they proved themselves a contributing stakeholder in urban sustainablity.  They return home to continue as local agents of change in an ever stronger global movement of women.

Activities organized by Huairou Commission Network Members:  GROOTS International, Women and Cities International, Women and Habitat Network – LAC, Women and Peace Network, International Council of Women.  Event support contributed by AECI, American Jewish World Service, Commonwealth Fund (GROOTS Africa), Cordaid, Ford Foundation(GROOTS), Government of Canada, UN-HABITAT, AECI and UNIFEM (Women & Habitat-LAC)

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