E-CARE’s gender policy promotes gender equality and promotes the rights of women. Within both the R2G and the new Enabling Recovery, Enhancing Resilience (ER2) disaster response programming, women form the majority of household representatives as well as officers of existing community organizations. There are also community organizations that are exclusively for women. Gender-power dynamics within households are based on the generation and control of family income, but those dynamics are changing as we work together to strategically promote projects and business activities that give income to women.
In the Receivers to Givers (R2G) program E-CARE supports community groups that receive livelihood grants to in turn pass on that same grant amount to another community group in the future. In this way, people are transformed from being receivers to givers. Many of E-CARE’s R2G grants support community livelihood projects that emphasize natural farming techniques to increase resilience to climate change and avoid the negative environmental and health effects of chemical use. Using certified organic agricultural practices also enables farmers to meet local demand for organic produce and compete in export markets. E-CARE’s training and financial support for food processing and marketing also generates improvements in local businesses.
We work with E-CARE in the aftermath of natural disasters to build resilience in communities. For instance, E-CARE logistically supports community agricultural programs to expand operations to provide emergency food aid to communities in need to supplement and expand external emergency funding.
We continue to engage with E-CARE through our Partners in Resilience and Response (PiRR) initiative where they gather regularly with other Anglican church partners to share learnings, skills and best practice to build their and their community’s capacity to prepare for and effectively respond to a disaster.
