From the frontlines of change: Advancing equity and climate justice through locally led action

Across every humanitarian or climate-stressed setting World Vision Canada engages in, one pattern refuses to stay hidden: women and girls are stepping into leadership roles. Women and girls negotiate community peace, rebuild homes after floods, design drought-resilience plans and sustain households when systems collapse. And yet, too often, their leadership remains unrecognized or underfunded.

At World Vision Canada, we believe that gender equality is not an afterthought in humanitarian and climate action; it is the story of resilience itself. Inclusive, locally led approaches are already reshaping humanitarian and climate action, aligning closely with donor commitments to intersectional, rights-based and locally driven change.

Women’s and youth leadership at the nexus of change

One of our flagship programs, Every Girl Can, in Mozambique’s Nampula province (in the districts of Nacaroa, Monapo, and Murrupula), is a five-year, gender-transformative project funded by Global Affairs Canada. It aims to advance gender equality and ensure that adolescent girls and young women can realize their rights, protected from sexual and gender-based violence, harmful initiation rites, and discrimination.

Take Sofia, a 16-year-old who once saw early marriage as her only option. Today, after joining a Safe Space for Girls club through Every Girl Can, Sofia speaks with confidence about her rights and her dreams.

“I look into the future with hope,” she says. “After learning about gender-based violence and communication, I can make better decisions about my life.”

Each week, Sofia meets with other girls at the club, where they learn about equality and self-esteem. These sessions are led by local women mentors, teachers and community volunteers who are trained through the project. Together, they create a circle of safety and sisterhood that reaches far beyond the classroom.

Through the project’s Channels of Hope Restore workshops, religious and traditional leaders discuss how long-held customs — like early initiation rites – can be reimagined to celebrate girls’ growth rather than limit their futures. In one community, male elders began advocating publicly for girls to stay in school, challenging norms that once silenced them.

The ripple effects are striking. In Murrupula district, Integrated Support Centres now provide survivors of gender-based violence with coordinated health, legal and psychosocial services. These centres were established through collaboration between World Vision, local government and women’s groups.

And the change doesn’t stop with girls. Boys are part of the movement too. In Champion Boys clubs, young men explore what positive masculinity means, learning that equality strengthens everyone.

Together, these stories highlight core truths:

Leadership is not just about survival it's about agency, design and transformation. Resilience in climate-humanitarian contexts is gendered: it is built on the often-unseen networks of women, the care economy, food-systems, community trust.

Embedding justice in how we fund change

World Vision Canada aligns its design and partnership models accordingly. For example, the Every Girl Can project embodies an intersectional, rights-based and gender-transformative approach to advancing equality and agency for girls and young women. Rooted in a rights-based framework, the project positions girls and young women as rights-holders rather than beneficiaries, strengthening the capacity of government protection institutions to deliver gender responsive services to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.

Beyond participation, its gender-transformative programming seeks to shift attitudes, behaviours and power relations through behaviour-change initiatives, Safe Space clubs, and boys’ advocacy groups that promote positive masculinity and equality. Together, these strategies create fertile ground for collaborative funding that prioritizes local leadership, agency and structural change fully aligned with gender equality and social inclusion, intersectional and localization principles.

Localization: Who leads matters

Localization isn’t a buzzword: it’s the future of effective climate-humanitarian response.

In Every Girl Can, World Vision Canada and partners create girl-empowerment clubs, train local teachers, initiation-matrons (community ritual leaders), engage men and boys and strengthen local civil society and government systems.

Localization means women’s organizations and youth voices designing and leading – not just implementing but shaping the agenda. By contrast to top-down models, this localization approach builds sustainability, ownership and accountability and helps to shift the power dynamics at the heart of gender and climate justice.

Partnership as practice

The future of gender equality, climate action and humanitarian response depends on collaboration across sectors, including civil society, academia, the private sector and local networks.

• Research partnerships are mapping the gendered impacts of climate change on women, girls and youth.
• Private-sector collaborations are supporting women entrepreneurs driving green innovation.
• Joint advocacy efforts are connecting humanitarian response with climate adaptation and peacebuilding.

The Every Girl Can project brings together the Government of Mozambique, local women’s organizations, community leaders and World Vision partners to advance services, shift social norms and achieve rights-based, lasting change. To tackle the interconnected challenges of humanitarian fragility, climate change and gender inequality, we must invest in women’s and youths' leadership as drivers of systemic change. This requires funding and partnership models that are transparent, adaptive and grounded in rights-based principles, ensuring that local actors, especially women and young people lead decision-making.

Success should not be measured by how many participants are reached, but by how power shifts: who makes the decisions, who controls resources and who defines resilience. Equally vital is a learning-oriented approach that gathers evidence, shares lessons openly, adapts in real time and upholds ethical storytelling and accountability. The experiences of the Every Girl Can project demonstrate what becomes possible when agency, local leadership and rights are placed at the heart of change.

A call to deeper collaboration

World Vision Canada stands as a partner committed to equity, evidence and shared learning. Our approach has evolved from traditional aid delivery toward one that is grounded in justice, gender transformation and locally led action. Across our programs, we work together with women’s organizations, youth groups, community, faith leaders, governments and research institutions to design solutions that are inclusive, sustainable and accountable.

Our vision is clear: to support women, girls and youth as leaders of climate-resilient humanitarian action, anchored in strong community systems, multi-sector collaboration and adaptive learning. World Vision Canada’s work is both faith- and rights-driven, collaborative in spirit and focused on creating lasting systemic change. Together, we can ensure that women, girls and youth move from the sidelines to the centre, leading the way in building just, resilient and inclusive communities.

Learn more about Every Girl Can:

• Her future, her power: Advancing health and well-being in Northern Mozambique
• Championing girls' leadership in Mozambique: Creating pathways for equity and opportunity
• Two girls fight against gender inequality