Thursday 6, May 2010

WEN News May 2010

Welcome to WEN News by e-mail! We have had some exciting developments in recent months, including the House of Commons launch of our new gender and climate change campaign; an Excellence Award; and a redesign of our website, making it more user-friendly and up-to-date. At the same time, we have continued our important outreach projects around Local Food. Thank you to all our members and supporters who have kindly and generously donated to WEN in recent months following our appeal, helping us continue our unique work; we were touched by your response and encouragement.

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Gender on the Agenda

To a packed Grand Committee Room at the House of Commons on 2 March, we launched our new gender and climate change campaign and the accompanying, comprehensive report Gender and the Climate Change Agenda. The high-profile event was chaired by WEN matron and Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Minister, Sandra Gidley MP, with an impressive line-up of enthusiastic speakers that included Maria Adebowale (Capacity Global), Natalie Bennett (Green Party), Tamsin Omond (Climate Rush), Betty Moxon (WI), Nicky Gavron (GLA), Eugenie Harvey (10:10), Peter Ainsworth MP, and WEN chair Bernadette Vallely.

Our unique report, which includes research conducted at the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change in December 2009, presents evidence of how climate change affects women differently and more acutely than men, and examines the importance of including women in climate-change solutions. It has received the support of numerous organisations, among them Progressio and ActionAid. Nicky Gavron, former Deputy Mayor of London, described it as “a firecracker of a report, comprehensive, and will become a very, very important document."

A briefing and the pdf report on gender and climate change is available to download from the Resources section of our website.

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Women and Climate Change Workshops

As part of our new gender and climate change campaign, WEN will be running a series of workshops to discuss the importance of a gender dimension in climate-change decision-making, and how women can be engaged to find solutions.  WEN Climate Change Coordinator, Kate, held the first of these free workshops, entitled Why Women and Climate Change?, in March at St. Hilda’s East Community Centre in east London. The day included a ‘Fruity Beauty’ natural cosmetics demonstration, a quiz and a delicious, multicultural sustainable lunch. Watch this space for news on our future climate change sessions.

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Excelling on the Environment

Award season has not escaped WEN: London Borough of Tower Hamlets Annual Third Sector Excellence Awards honoured us at a Gala evening on 11 March as runners-up in the “Improving the environment” section for our Local Food projects. Tower Hamlets has consistently supported our Local Food programme, which has helped women into voluntary and paid work.

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Celebrating Women’s Day in the Community

Workshops on the themes of garden memories, home-made beauty products, and local food-growing helped mark International Women’s Day as part of our regular Culture Kitchen event. Held at the Walter Newby Centre in London’s East End on 9 March in conjunction with Zacchaeus Project, WEN engaged local community members from diverse backgrounds on some of the many facets of more sustainable and healthy living, breaking for lunch with a delicious curry courtesy of the Wapping Women’s Centre. Attendees also had the chance to see the Centre’s new and blossoming community garden, developed last year in collaboration with WEN.

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Making Noise at Copenhagen

WEN chair Bernadette Vallely ventured by train to Copenhagen in December to make sure women’s voices were represented at the 2009 international Conference on Climate Change. While side events demonstrated much will on the part of non-governmental organisations and some politicians to ensure equality and highlight the gendered impacts of climate change, WEN discovered that gender was far from being on the menu of those dining at the main table. We have included our findings there on gender representation in our new Gender and the Climate Change Agenda report, a tool we will use to influence policy-makers and the public on the importance of a gender dimension to climate-change mitigation and adaptation. To read our unique perspectives on climate change, including Bernadette’s comments post-Copenhagen, please visit our climate change blog. 

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New-Look WEN

Regular users of WEN’s resource-packed website may have already noticed its new design. A revamp of the site was overdue, and while some of the reconstruction is still in process, we’re very pleased with the results! Thanks to a grant from Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation, we have made the site more visually appealing, user-friendly, and concise, while we are also taking advantage of social networks like Facebook. Let us know what you think, email info@wen.org.uk . Meanwhile, if you are on Facebook, please join the discussions on our group, and follow Bernadette’s regular tweets.

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