Weaving leadership for gender equality: Another Waves journey begins

RECOFTC hosted a Waves start-up workshop at our main office in Bangkok, Thailand from 1 to 5 September 2025. The event brought together 20 participants from seven countries, marking the start of another ‘Weaving leadership for gender equality’ (Waves) training.

Waves aims to increase leadership capacity among early-career professionals to tackle systemic inequities and marginalization that often result from the institutionalization of patriarchal norms in forestry and landscape management.

The start-up workshop kicked off a six-month gender leadership programme. It focused on three interlinked thematic areas – gender equality and social inclusion (GESI), forestry and natural resource management, and climate change. Participants explored how the application of inclusive and innovative GESI strategies can help tackle complex challenges related to the gender–forestry–climate change nexus. It provided a common platform for the participants to learn about and exchange ideas and experiences around these elements.

Over a five-day period, participants were introduced to the fundamentals of GESI. They learned about and analysed key concepts, pressing issues, linkages, current initiatives and developments related to GESI in climate change and natural resource management.

In addition, there were sessions on the gendered impacts of climate change, risks assessment, gender-based violence and the climate crisis. A dedicated session on GESI analysis included identifying gender-responsive climate actions as key to understanding the complexities involved in mainstreaming gender in natural resource management.

A strong gender leadership component permeates across our Waves programme. The Waves leadership model helps tackle complexities through a diverse model along with a focus on the communication skills essential for gender leadership. We adopt a multi-method participatory approach to allow participants to understand and apply real-life leadership skills in fighting gender inequalities.

These include some cornerstone approaches that are the signature of the Waves programme – plenary presentations, group exercises, peer and group learning, sharing stories of change, role plays and journaling. The application of these approaches helps link technical knowledge with practical leadership skills, thereby strengthening gender-responsive climate actions.

Towards the end of the five-day training, participants reflected and reviewed their transformative change projects, on the basis of which they were selected. Each transformative change project intends to introduce and incorporate innovations into gender leadership in climate change and natural resource management. As participants streamlined and further strengthened their plans at the workshop, they also drafted tailored leadership plans for themselves. A few of them redesigned their change projects based on what they learned during the training sessions.

“The training’s participatory approach helped me think deeper about how to make actions gender responsive,” said Muna Sharma, a senior forest officer at the Ministry of Forest and Environment, Nepal. “We need to move beyond traditional planning processes where gender considerations and gender inclusion are not factored in.”

Employed across government, non-government, civil society, academic and private sectors, our current Waves participants will ‘graduate’ in February 2026.

***

Srijana Baral is programme lead for gender equality and social inclusion at RECOFTC.

Waves is RECOFTC’s flagship capacity-building programme on gender equality and social inclusion in the Asia-Pacific region.