Description of the project: This project, as part of WEDO’s broader work on mobilizing women for climate justice, provides mentorship and media training for women from frontline communities including indigenous, rural, and grassroots leaders across 8 regions. Goals are: 1. to build the capacity of individual women environmental defenders to pitch and share their local stories of resilience and innovation, thus crafting a narrative of climate justice which reflects their needs and perspectives; 2. to provide strategic support to women’s rights organizations working on climate justice to effectively communicate the work happening at local levels across regions in global media and policy.

Climate Impact: Tackling climate change and achieving climate justice requires the inputs and perspectives of all of us, particularly those most impacted, in developing real solutions. The work in amplifying women’s resilience efforts so far has highlighted over 70+ climate adaptation and mitigation projects in the last two years, and supported them in receiving additional funding and international / national media attention. In addition, women are providing much needed education, training and capacity building on climate impacts in their networks and communities.

Gender Impact: The program tackles the under-representation of women in the climate change narrative. As reported by CNN, even though media coverage of climate change has increased significantly, only 15% of those interviewed on climate have been women. At COP21 in Paris for example, a focus on training and media skills ensured that women in this program were featured in over 100 articles, interviews and TV spots, including spots on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, and feature articles in environmental outlets such as Grist.

Scalability / replicability: This type of media training and support, particularly focused on women, can be mainstreamed and replicated across all types of climate change programming, ensuring all women-led & gender-just solutions are scaled and amplified at national and international levels. The ultimate vision in amplifying women’s voices is to transform the climate change narrative, from a technical issue to a moral, women’s rights, and human-centered issue that demands people-powered solutions.