In conversation with Jenipher Mkandawire, Chairperson of WONECAM and Tawonga Kayira, Communications Lead
Women Network for Climate Action in Malawi (WONECAM) is a feminist movement established in 2021 as a government-led initiative through the Ministry of Gender and transitioned to civil society leadership in 2022. Born from Malawi's participation in the Generation Equality series of workshops in Mexico and Paris, the network emerged from the government's commitment to feminist climate action and climate funding for women. With initial funding from the Government of Canada, WONECAM brings together over 80 women leaders from all 24 districts of Malawi, including farmers, cooperative members, and representatives from government and international organizations. The network focuses on training women in climate awareness, leadership skills, climate finance access, and proposal development, while establishing regional chapters to ensure women's participation as decision-makers in local climate action committees. Through a Training of Trainers approach incorporating key gender concepts and proposal writing skills, WONECAM addresses critical barriers including lack of capacity at grassroots level for climate-smart agriculture, challenges in value addition and market linkages, and limited funding access for women's organizations. The network actively monitors constitutional provisions at local levels, promotes women's representation in district-level climate change structures, and ensures the inclusion of climate issues affecting women, children, and excluded groups. Through Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) focal persons at community and district levels, WONECAM monitors GESI indicators, raises awareness of gender-responsive climate resilience best practices, and supports safeguarding efforts. Built on members' extensive experience in civil society and women's empowerment work, the network serves as the government-recognized platform for coordinating women's climate action across Malawi. Currently operating with volunteer leadership while formalizing registration under the Trustees Incorporation Act, WONECAM aims to secure independent funding access by 2030 in alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, working through an elected leadership structure including a Chair, President, Communications Lead, Secretary, and Treasurer, supported by an overarching Secretariat.
Tell me about your organization and what inspired you to start WONECAM - the women’s network for climate action and leadership?
We are passionate about inclusion in development with regard to the multiple and intersecting forms of inequalities often experienced by women and girls. We were already working in the gender space to address systemic gender inequalities in the country as women and girls are disproportionately affected by gender inequality and climate change. There was no national structure for women’s engagement especially on climate change resilience and adaptation which is the focus of LIFE-AR. There were many different networks on climate change and for youth , but no coordinated group of women, so we decided to have a group for women and climate change.
How do you operate?
We are creating robust structures from national to district and community level with a bottom-up approach to leadership. We have a two-pronged approach which includes our engagement with the LIFE-AR initiative on the one hand, and additional activities through the Ministry of Gender to build the capacity of women.
Within WONECAM, we have conducted Trainer of Trainer sessions for women and organized a write shop to help identify potential donors for women in climate action groups and how to do proposals. Despite not yet being registered, we have an interim secretariat with leadership roles already highlighted. Since we do not have an office, our meetings are often virtual such as through mobile messages or calls to update each other. We have our Constitution which guides us and now a new strategic plan. We also have our own organizational profile and action plan that guides us which has not yet been fully implemented due to resource constraints.
Why is your work important within the context of climate change?
It is very important. History has shown us that women, youth, people with disabilities and other groups are excluded and that these are mostly marginalized groups. Women are disproportionately affected by the effects of climate change and often left behind because they are not included in the decision-making. Those in decision-making roles may not feel the same impacts or may forget the women. It is important to include them as human beings with human rights.
This seems to resonate well with LIFE-AR which is all about increasing access to climate finance for locally-led adaptation to ensure that 70 percent of all climate finance goes directly to communities and those who are the most impacted, including women. What is WONECAM’s specific role in LIFE-AR Malawi?
With LIFE-AR, we work [at national level] as GESI Focal Points for Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) and are part of the LIFE-AR Global GESI Working Group. Our role includes ensuring that GESI is integrated into LIFE-AR in Malawi and that it cuts across all five LIFE-AR offers including governance. We ensure that the LIFE- AR manual, Design Mechanism, Theory of Change, monitoring, evaluation and reporting have incorporated gender considerations, including within the LIFE-AR structures such as the Programme Implementation Unit (PIU). We have advocated for the active participation of the Ministry of Gender and the harmonization of gender policies with climate change policies along with the development of a gender and climate discourse for LIFE-AR, including development of the LIFE-AR GESI Action Plan.
[At local level] We are providing support to the communities we are working with to ensure they understand gender issues in relation to climate and that monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) indicators and outcomes are gender-sensitive.
We have also worked to support the integration of GESI issues into the budgets and work plans at the district level, as well as alignment with national gender and climate change policies to support the continuous mainstreaming of gender into climate initiatives. We are providing technical inputs, guidance and capacity building at the local level to ensure GESI is integrated and not forgotten.
This is especially important in implementation to help avoid any potential exploitation and abuse. When doing community engagement, we stress on the inclusiveness of women, girls, young people, people with disabilities, marginalized groups and others who may be impacted by the adverse effects of climate change using gender transformative approaches such as intersectionality which identifies vulnerabilities from those facing multiple and intersecting forms of inequalities.
Is there anything else you’d like to add on how WONECAM is engaged in the LIFE-AR initiative?
LIFE-AR has helped with the visibility and legitimization of WONECAM and has recognized us. When we engage with communities on gender and climate action we are not going to support as individuals, instead we go as the network on secondment from the Ministry of Gender which helps to ensure the GESI interventions are prioritized and that we are able to participate and contribute.
There is a commitment from the government to recognize the organisation and the structure and this includes the commitments from LIFE-AR to engage and support the organization. Now anyone who wants to do climate action with women in Malawi is directed to engage with WONECAM as the civil society women’s network.
How are you working with LIFE-AR communities to support more inclusive and gender-responsive decision-making for climate adaptation and resilience?
When engaging communities, we emphasise on demonstrating to them how climate change brings gendered-differentiated needs that are not only practical but also strategic. The practical needs are easy to address but strategic needs, which are structural in nature are often overlooked, such as gender-based violence. In alignment with the gender blueprint, the Beijing Platform for Action Declaration, we focus on its key priority areas such as women and health, women and poverty, the girl child, violence against women, women and education, women in decision-making and human rights of women amongst others. We also ensure that the investments address both gender practical needs and gender strategic needs, asking the women questions when we are in communities. So far we have seen communities addressing structural issues such as harmful cultural practices, reporting GBV cases through grievance redress mechanisms, actively take decision-making roles in the investments and being hopeful that the investments will address their poverty and improve their health.
Initially the districts were developing climate change proposals that were not gender-sensitive. The network played a role to ensure these investments started to take gender and social inclusion issues into consideration. This is critical as it is a requirement for accessing climate finance. In the case of monitoring and evaluation, we have been working with the MEL team on the strengthening of reporting on GESI issues.
Our engagement with LIFE-AR has also helped to spread the word about WONECAM and to ensure that as new committees are set up, they are gender-sensitive to be more inclusive. We have also leveraged on the expertise of existing network members to participate in the committees.
What are some of the benefits of having women involved alongside the men in the decision-making and investment prioritization and what progressive impacts have you seen so far?
Gender practical needs and most importantly gender strategic needs that could have been overlooked are now being identified by women. Since they are the ones that are disproportionately affected for example, women often have to travel long distances to draw water, they play a pivotal role in identification of appropriate investments that would ease their workload. In one district, one of the traditional leaders confessed that once opportunities were given to women, they were able to create wealth not only for themselves as men would do but also for their family. In another district, one man confessed that he never used to do household chores to support his wife while she was out working in the field but after the gender training he is now able to reverse the trend which is critical as women are overburdened by their triple role in society. In another area, women are playing a key role in the irrigation scheme and are respected by their communities. Women who have been trained have started introducing themselves at the district level and some have been elected to their Village Development Committees, including putting themselves forward to be elected as the Chair or Vice Chair where they can contribute to decision-making on climate change adaptation and community priorities. Some have played active roles in disaster committees and contributed to make them more gender-responsive. Our engagement has also led to more collaborations with other international NGOs which has helped us to recruit more members. This has reinforced some key LIFE-AR principles such as the ‘whole-of-society’ approach and ‘business-unusual’ and the principle of ‘leaving no-one behind’ along with the MW2063 strategy on ‘inclusive wealth’.
I understand that you took part in a LIFE-AR GESI peer learning exchange, bringing together different GESI and MEL practitioners and that you will soon launch a new group in the central region, can you say more on this?
The plan is to leverage on the LIFE-AR initiative to scale-up on the presence of WONECAM in the districts. LIFE-AR is being piloted in Salima, Rumphi and Mangochi. We are planning to intensify the work of WONECAM in the pilot districts by targeting women in the initiative to promote gender equality on climate change initiatives. This will also be done in other districts that the LIFE-AR initiative will be scaling-up to.
What are you plans for next steps?
The registration process has been holding us back and once this is in the place we will be focused more on the strategic plan that we have been developing to help move us forward along with the communications strategy to increase the network’s visibility. In our action plan, we have tasks like developing a website, capacity assessment needs, more stakeholder mapping, research, and resource mobilization which still need to be intensified. We look forward to continuing to lead on issues of GESI in LIFE-AR and spreading our tentacles nationally. We also want to make strategic alliances at regional and global level including UNFCCC COP. So far, the government has always invited us to attend COP and to be on their delegation but we have not had the funds to attend. We want the voices of women at grassroots to be heard at COP and other global platforms.
Is there anything else you would like to tell us?
WONECAM is the first of its kind in Malawi and has the potential to be quite transformational. The fact that we are seeing women being elected onto Village Development Committees in key leadership roles as the Chair or Vice Chair, and how families are being transformed through greater awareness of some of the gender issues working alongside men and women together, and how when women are able to come together they can actually make a difference and play an active role in the development and prioritization of climate change initiatives on the ground – that’s trailblazing!
This discussion took place with Chantelle Cummings, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Advisor, LIFE-AR interim Secretariat. LIFE-AR would like to thank Jenipher and Tawonga for taking the time to share their story and for their continuing support for the LIFE-AR initiative in Malawi in conjunction with the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Gender.
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