The ECWG participates in events, conferences, and meetings around the world with an interest in women’s groups, collective action, and economic development. You can keep up with all upcoming events and conferences here.
Women Saving for Resilience Innovation Fund: Innovation Fund
December 03, 2020 – January 22, 2021
The Small Enterprise Evaluation Project (SEEP) is delighted to launch a challenge fund to support innovations in gender intentional COVID response and recovery efforts related to Savings Groups. SEEP will award four to six 18-month grants, worth a total of $600,000.
The fund will be responsive to promising innovations of diverse types and scope. This may include communications and training materials, program models, policy development, technology, new partnerships, or disruptive collaboration. Activities and interventions the fund might support include:
- Technologies or adaptations in Savings Group methodologies that better meet the needs of women to mitigate the effects of health, economic, and social shocks;
- Technologies or approaches that enable Savings Groups to effectively adapt to physical distancing requirements; and
- Partnerships and disruptive collaboration between Savings Groups and market actors (government, civil society and private sector) as part of gender intentional COVID-19 response and recovery efforts.
Successful projects will increase the resilience of Savings Groups and their members in times of crisis by reducing gender gaps and barriers in access to resources and improve the capacity of sector stakeholders to engage them in emergency response efforts.
Proposed interventions must include a strong, practical learning component to document the innovation, track progress, consolidate and assess experience, and communicate results (both internally and externally).
Mechanisms in Women’s Groups Interventions: Findings from two recent reviews
This webinar will focus on mechanisms in interventions with women’s groups in low and middle-income country settings. The speakers will present findings from two recent evidence reviews: a synthesis of experimental and quasi-experimental evidence on livelihoods, health and adolescent groups and a mixed-methods systematic review of interventions with community groups to improve women’s and children’s health. The panelists, who bring wide experience implementing and researching women’s groups interventions, will discuss implications of these reviews on programs and the evidence base on women’s groups.
September 23, 2020 – September 25, 2020
The EVIDENCE 2020 event is the biennial gathering hosted by the Africa Evidence Network. EVIDENCE 2020 ONLINE is being designed as a virtual working meeting that will foster collaboration, facilitate dialogue, and move forward the thinking, practice, and action to advance the use of evidence in decision-making across the continent.
Adolescent Health and Gender Equality: Implications of Covid-19
This webinar will explore intersections of adolescent health and gender-based impacts of COVID-19, including educational opportunities, empowerment collective participation, sexual and reproductive health and health behaviors.
ECWG co-PI, Sapna Desai, will be speaking on ‘Disruption and opportunity: the effects of COVID-19 on organizing women and girls’
September 12, 2020 – September 14, 2020
The conclave aims to explore how evaluation theory and practice can address complex socio-environmental challenges through innovation and collaborative processes, with an emphasis on gender and equity. The conclave will host discussions on new ways of bringing together existing tools and methods, the use of new processes such as big data and social media, and the use of techniques and tools adapted from other disciplines and sectors.
How can we support community/women groups for longer-term local economic recovery and resilience?
Community groups (SHGs, farmer groups, saving groups, etc.) are one of the important platforms for local economic development (LED). Most of the community group members are women. Focusing on LED strategies is key to ensuring longer-term local economic recovery and resilience. Such approaches entail investing in entrepreneurship of community/women groups, linking community institutions to value chains, investing in productive infrastructure, supporting financial institutions, and developing public-private partnerships. This session will explore how community/women groups are coping up with COVID and discuss strategies to support women groups and collectives for the transition to economic institutions and longer-term local economic recovery.
Women’s Groups and Health in India: Program Implications of a Recent Systematic Review
The webinar discussed findings of mixed-methods systematic review on community interventions with women’s groups to improve health outcomes in India. Authors presented a summary from a review of 99 studies, followed by a discussion of how the findings can inform large-scale programs with women’s groups implemented by the National Health Mission and National Rural Livelihoods Mission.
The webinar was hosted by the Evidence Consortium on Women's Groups (ECWG) and University College London (UCL) Centre for the Health of Women, Children and Adolescents.
Virtual Innovation Challenge: Driving inclusive and resilient savings groups
International Association for Feminist Economics 2020 Annual Conference
June 25, 2020 – June 27, 2020
This conference is designed to provide an open forum for the exchange of ideas and the dissemination of research relevant to feminist inquiry of economic issues.
Virtual Roundtable: Women's Economic Empowerment in the Time of COVID-19
The discussion will explore the impact of COVID-19 in these areas of women’s economic empowerment and how projects and organizations are responding to these challenges in practical ways. The virtual roundtable will serve as an opportunity for members to share actionable insights that can inform the work of others in this space.