By: Candice K. Stewart
“When women plant seeds, they don’t just grow food, they grow resilience, they grow networks, and most importantly, they grow legacies.” – Dorain Clarke
Harvest
After three magnificent days filled with enrichingly insightful, edifying, and inspiring presentations and discussions led by women from the Global South, the Caribbean Women for Climate Justice virtual conference (CW4CJ2025) came to a close on Saturday, July 19. The conference spanned themes of long-term resilience, cross-border leadership in climate justice, and the pursuit of funding to support these efforts. To truly achieve the sown seeds of sustainability, there must be a deep commitment to resilience, justice, and collaboration, and those features remain present throughout.
Done in three parts, the 2025 Caribbean Women for Climate Justice virtual conference covered the subthemes of:
- Dimensions of Resilience: Live Case Studies from the Global South with Nicole Joseph Chin, Ivy Kessei, Dr. Paula Henry, Maxine Alleyne-Esprit, Karina Gomez as speakers – moderated by Dorain Clarke
- Power in Her Hands: Cultivating Equity and Climate Solutions in the Global South with Renee Atwell, Steffy Heera, Dr. Theresa Rodriguez Moodie, and Jacintha Realine – moderated by Marion Atieno Osieyo moderating.
- Show Me the Money – The Virtual Grant Writing Workshop – a practical and hands-on experience led by Karen Philip
Day One: Exploring the ‘Dimensions of Resilience’
The presenters from the Caribbean and Kenya aligned well with the conference theme and went beyond airing the already known and established problems. The lived experiences shared went defied the cliché and demonstrated expertise and pathways to real solutions.
The conference’s aim was to build a community for practical solutions and attendees received just that – examples that they can apply in their respective contexts. This included Dr. Paula Henry’s transformative collaborative work post the 2010 earthquake in Haiti the reorganising of medical clinics for displaced populations, partnering with Haitian children and artists to create and sell artwork reflective of their trauma-turned resilience, and advocacy for sustained regional solidarity, and the focus on long-term solutions-oriented recovery. It also included Mrs. Joseph Chin’s presentation about protecting women’s dignity and security in the midst of a disaster, and the presented work from International Organization for Migration (IOM) on the realities of climate-induced displacement and the importance of reinforced resilience through the IOM.
Day one underscored, through the shared case studies, that people tend to look at the technical approach to the general response in building resilience, whether it’s the infrastructure or sector level approaches. However, emphasis ought to be placed on the invisible elements, the burden of care, and what they feel like with shared experiences.
“When we are not at 100 per cent, we can’t function properly, and so there are things that we are deprived of as women. In vulnerable situations, those deprivations are intensified. There are things we need to think of before we even get to some boardroom matters, as to how we’re driving change and transformation. We have to go back to the basics of care, consideration, and dignity – which highlights intersectionality.” – Dainalyn Swaby
A common theme among the presenters was the protection of dignity and security across the varied specified scopes of care. It’s one of the things that are often taken for granted until we find ourselves in those difficult situations. An important note was the Global South context where Ivy Kessei shared about participatory communication and how we can use that in application for women in production systems – specifically, women working in Kenyan coffee.
Nicole Joseph Chin’s presentation highlighted that some of the experiences women endure are not particularly unique to them, and that is the primary reason South-South collaborations are important. The alignment illuminated that the shared cases transcend challenges faced and focus on the shared solidarity, action, and information exchange needed to achieve sown seeds of sustainability.
As the first day wrapped, the speakers shared short statements on what resilience should look like and we’ve blended them to reflect in the following statement:
Resilience isn’t built in isolation; it’s nurtured through collaboration, long-term care, and deep respect for both people and place. Nicole Joseph-Chin reminded us that, “Collaboration solves everything.” Dr. Paula Henry urged us to look beyond immediate relief and invest in lasting recovery. Maxine Alleyne-Esprit challenged us to center human security, not just physical vulnerability. Karina Gomez called on us to honour traditional knowledge and local voices, and Ivy Kessei left us with a gentle but urgent reminder to, ‘keep the conversation going’.”
Day Two: Exploring Power in “Powering Equity & Climate Solutions in the Global South”
“Gender matters not only in how it shapes risk, but it certainly shapes how people recover, who gets left behind after the disaster, and also who ends up holding everything together during a crisis. Caribbean women are not just survivors of disaster…they are the architects of resilience”. – Kendria Ferguson
Day two introduced the keynote address from Sustainability and Climate Resilience Specialist, Kendria Ferguson, who from start to finish led with a powerful message of empowerment, inclusion, and an action-focused mindset, highlighting that women need to be placed more at the forefront of decision making in the boardrooms where policies are drafted, resources are equitably allocated and solid plans are laid for community mobilisation – not just on the ground, in the homes and communities being strongholds of families and neighbours – since the roles they play in endurance and recovery are already crucial and automatic, and generally without the right types of recognition.
She highlighted the invisible labour, quiet leadership, and the resilience of Caribbean women in the face of climate chaos. More importantly, how women can take that power and institutionalise it and really help to strengthen community resilience after a natural disaster.
“Storms don’t impact communities equally. This is where gender, poverty, and marginalisation begin to shape vulnerability and recovery outcomes for the region,” she said.
The keynote speaker looked at the reasons gender is such a critical factor in disaster response across the Caribbean and noted that female-headed households face a higher risk, are more likely to report displacement, and lack insurance or financial buffers for recovery. Additionally, she pointed out that there’s an unpaid burden of care post-disaster when it comes to women. So, they shoulder caregiving duties for children, elders, and the sick, displaced neighbours and family which intensifies after disruption, and that limits time, mobility, and access to support.
“These gaps and more delay [women’s] ability to rebuild and re-stabilise their lives after a storm and their stories aren’t unique,” she said, referring to women in parts of The Bahamas. “Across the region, women are leading the response at the household level. For example, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, female farmers and vendors used savings and social networks to help their families survive after volcanic and storm-related shocks,” she continued, stating that, “these grassroots resilience strategies are often led by women and help propel communities toward long-term recovery.”
Ferguson continued to state that social protection systems often overlook women’s role in informal labour and caregiving. So when women do everything to keep families and communities afloat, they are often least supported by any disaster or national policy.
She left the audience with a five-pronged call-to-action for moving from sown seeds into actionable systems:
- 1. Fund women-led solutions;
- 2. Integrate gender in disaster and climate policy;
- 3. Institutionalise local leadership;
- 4. Design inclusive early warning & protection systems;
- 5. Shift from recognition of women’s resilience to redistributing power, funding, and decision-making authority. “We don’t want to be strong all the time; we just want to be safe.”
The keynote address was the perfect segue into the panel discussion led by moderator Marion Atieno Osieyo and panelists, Renee Atwell, founder of Girls of Impact; Steffy Heera, CCO of Renewable Power Caribbean Limited; Dr. Theresa Rodriguez Moodie, CEO of Jamaica Environment Trust (JET); and Jacintha Realine, Wapichan Women Representative.
The panel offered a robust discussion on leadership, equity, and climate solutions. One key takeaway: collaboration with men in the climate space must be prioritised, as they hold power and resources that can support women-led efforts.
Day Three: “Show Me The Money” and Empowering Women to Find Funding Opportunities
“Do your listening tour,” so that “your alignment becomes your assignment”– Karen Philip
It was, perhaps, the conference’s more hands-on and practical segments where participants engaged in an intensive workshop on fund-seeking, grant writing, and participatory communication designed to align projects with climate justice goals that impact women across the Caribbean.
Ably led by Karen Philip, social development specialist at Kainos, participants received a hands-on, practical workshop for seeking funding. She walked participants through the full grant-writing process; from crafting compelling proposals and integrating gender perspectives, to using AI tools, aligning with funders, and planning for success.
She encouraged participants to utilise an enhanced elevator pitch, which she called going on the listening tour. It may be used as a way for participants to introduce themselves and their projects to potential funders, all the while testing the waters to identify the direction that funders would like to go.
So, if Days One and Two were about preparing the soil and planting seeds of power and equity, then Day Three was the moment to water those seeds with tangible resources – the skills to access climate funding – a major part of resilience building. The session on grant writing and funding access wasn’t just a technical workshop. It was a strategic intervention which recognised that without financial support, even the most visionary climate justice initiatives risk withering before they bloom. It truly transitioned the conference towards an action and implementation mindset after two days of groundwork and dialogue.
Understanding the mechanics of grant writing is more than a professional skill, it’s a form of power and holds the capability to equip women to translate lived experience into fundable strategy, and move from informal resilience to institutional recognition. In the context of the Global South, where climate impacts are severe and resources often scarce, this capacity becomes a lifeline worthy of constant practice and improvement. It allows women to:
- Frame their work in language funders understand, without compromising the integrity of community-led solutions.
- Navigate gatekeeping structures that often exclude grassroots voices from major funding streams.
- Build sustainability into their advocacy, ensuring that projects don’t just start but that they endure, evolve, and scale.
“Show me the Money” ended with a hands-on skills test, and it was clear that participants gained as much as they enjoyed.
So, what’s next?
The conference wasn’t just an event, it was an invitation to gather, grow, and act. To put our hands in the soil and our voices into the wind, sowing together the future we deserve.
Following the insightful contributions, and action-led sessions, the knowledge shared will be composted into new ideas, tools will be passed on, and strategies will be planted within communities. Through discussions, panels, a grant writing workshop, presentations on storytelling, and highlighting the intersection of climate change and women’s health, environmental policy solutions, and more, participants walked away with a host of actionable insights, inspiration for new initiatives, tools to secure transformative funding, and ideas for innovation to adapt successful models of community resilience in their own contexts. The hope is that attendees will deepen their understanding of gender-responsive climate action while forging connections with a network of Caribbean and other Global-South women leading the charge, sharing lived solutions to issues like water scarcity, period poverty, and sustainable agriculture. It’s a continuous and every changing cyclical experience and that is where the true harvest lies.
The seeds have been sown. Now, it’s time to water them with action, collaboration, and care.
The CW4CJ 2025 virtual conference was made possible through its organisers, The Climate Conscious Podcast and Global Yaadie, with support from the Clara Lionel Foundation, key sponsors Girls CARE Jamaica, and a host of other community co-sponsors.
You may tune in to the recorded first two days:
Day one: Dimensions of Resilience
Day two: Power in Her Hands
Attendees are invited to provide feedback by completing a post-conference survey here!
Snippets from the conference may be found on the social media accounts of the organisers. Stay connected: Follow the conference organisers on Instagram at @theclimateconscious and @globalyaadie.
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