Gender Strategy and Action Plan | TCAP | 2020
Distinct effort has been made to promote gender equality and increase socio-economic gender empowerment in the implementation of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. The project's Gender Strategy and Action Plan articulates a succinct roadmap to achieving its goals related to greater resilience for men and women in the country.
Like in many Pacific Island countries, gender inequalities are recognised as development challenges in Tuvalu. Current government efforts has gained traction in government commitments to addressing this issue at the international, regional and national level through conventions, commitments, leadership, policies, plans and strategies. TCAP will contribute to the government’s ongoing efforts to address gender inequalities particularly in the area of coastal adaptation to build community resilience against impacts of climate change.
To play this important role TCAP promotes long term education and training of women in technical areas relevant to coastal adaptation as a long term goal of the project. TCAP also extends its focus onto workers safety by introducing codes of conduct and gender harassment guidelines for project workers. TCAP also promotes Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM) as avenue for aggrieved parties in the project both men and women to have their grievances heard and resolved. These guidelines and practices promote dialogue and action to help address gender based issues. More importantly, TCAP stands to transform gender empowerment by elevating the role of women in the monitoring and evaluation of Kaupules using scorecards and participatory videos.
This level of gender innovation looks beyond the tokenistic participation of women in development into creating new spaces for strong women leadership in the island council as a way of building resilience through strategic participation of women. To realise these goals timely implementation is critical.
TCAP Project Management Unit (PMU) is responsible for implementing the GSAP to deliver gender equality and empowerment in five target areas; education and training; economic opportunities; decision making and leadership; partnerships and monitoring and evaluation. Through the GSAP we are committed to ensure that no one is left behind in the pursuit of building resilience against climate change in coastal adaptation in Tuvalu.