We are honored to have represented our team and our local partners at the Mekong Environmental Resilience Week 2025 (MERW 2025), where we had the opportunity to share achievements and lessons learned from the Gender-Sensitive Infrastructure for Climate Resilience (GS4Infra) project in Cù Lao Dung.
During the session, we highlighted how GS4Infra has worked to integrate local women and marginalized groups into the full cycle of design, implementation, and evaluation of water–energy–climate infrastructure. Through our work, we recognized that meaningful participation requires more than consultation—it demands co-production and co-management.
A core achievement of the project was developing practical mechanisms to enable women’s leadership in climate-resilient development, including:
• Co-producing new livelihood models with local women, tailored to climate risks and economic opportunities.
• Co-managing the Women Entrepreneurs Association, which has become a platform for a true nexus approach connecting:
• Water irrigation
• Sustainable agriculture
• New livelihood creation
• Community development
• GEDSI (Gender Equality, Disability, and Social Inclusion) integration
These experiences will guide and strengthen the GS4Infra scale-up pathway in the coming years.
We are also delighted to announce that we have secured new funding for the Women4Mangrove (W4M) initiative, supported through the SEA Grants, part of the SCS SAP Project—an initiative led by UNEP, in partnership with UNOPS and COBSEA, and funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). We were proud to introduce Women4Mangrove, alongside GS4Infra (funded by SEI), in the same MERW 2025 platform, showcasing how both initiatives reinforce community-driven climate resilience across the Mekong region.
Beyond presenting our work, our management team greatly benefited from meaningful exchanges with professionals across borders and sectors. Through storytelling sessions, panel discussions, and collaborative dialogues, we gained valuable insights into innovative practices and partnership models that are shaping environmental resilience globally.
These learnings will continue to inspire our commitment to serve communities more effectively and to work toward a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable future for the Mekong.
For more information about our initiatives, please visit:
gedsimekong.org
women4mangrove.com
