By Namya Gunawardena, MCLD Asia Coordinator
On 25 March, in a month globally dedicated to recognizing and advancing gender equality, the Gender Working Group of the Movement for Community-Led Development will be formally launched as a vital step forward in strengthening gender justice across our global community. This moment, aligned with the spirit of International Women’s Day, is both a celebration and a call to action: a celebration of the leadership, resilience, and transformative contributions of women and girls within community-led movements, and a call to amplify their voices while advancing justice for all marginalized genders.
Register for the March 25 launch on Zoom.
Community-led development has long demonstrated that sustainable change emerges when communities themselves define priorities and solutions. Within this process, gender equality is not a secondary concern but central. Across diverse regions and contexts, women, girls, and individuals of marginalized gender identities are leading efforts to strengthen livelihoods, defend human rights, build peace, and sustain communities. Yet their leadership and realities are often overlooked or underrepresented in policy, funding, and decision-making spaces.
The Gender Working Group exists to address this gap by ensuring that gender justice is deeply embedded within the vision, practice, and global advocacy of MCLD.
The Gender Working Group is envisioned as both an advisory and action-oriented platform. It will guide and support MCLD in integrating gender-responsive and intersectional approaches across governance, programmes, and partnerships. This includes ensuring that MCLD’s policies, systems, and strategies reflect the principles of equity, dignity, and justice. At the same time, the group will serve as a collaborative space where members can share experiences, strengthen skills, and learn from one another’s work in advancing gender-responsive community-led development.
While the launch event highlights the importance of amplifying the voices of women and girls, the scope of the Gender Working Group extends beyond this focus. Gender justice requires recognizing and addressing the diverse and intersecting realities faced by all marginalized genders, including gender diverse and non-binary individuals, whose experiences are often excluded from mainstream development discourse. The Gender Working Group is committed to fostering inclusive dialogue, reflection, and action that acknowledges this diversity and promotes meaningful participation and leadership for all.
Institutional strengthening is a key priority of the group. The Gender Working Group will support members in building their capacity to conduct gender analysis, integrate gender perspectives into programme design and evaluation, and utilize tools such as gender audits and participatory assessments. It will also contribute to the development of practical guidance, toolkits, and policies that enable organizations to translate commitments into concrete action.
In addition, the Gender Working Group will play an important role in knowledge production and global engagement by documenting community experiences, publishing research, and contributing at local/regional and global platforms. The group will take effort to elevate locally grounded perspectives and strengthen global understanding of gender-responsive community-led development. These efforts will ensure that the lived realities, innovations, and leadership emerging from communities inform broader development and humanitarian discourse.
At its core, the Gender Working Group reflects MCLD’s belief that gender justice is inseparable from community leadership, social justice, and sustainable development. It is not only about addressing inequalities, but about transforming systems, amplifying community knowledge, and building a future where all people regardless of gender can participate fully, safely, and with dignity.
The launch of the Gender Working Group marks the beginning of a collective journey.
It is an invitation to members, partners, and communities to deepen their commitment, share their experiences, and work together to advance gender justice from the ground up. By centering community voices and fostering solidarity across regions, the Gender Working Group will help ensure that gender equality is not only an aspiration, but a lived reality within community-led development worldwide.
Featured Photo by Rozalina Burkova (@rozalinaburkova) for Fine Acts (@fineacts) under Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC-BY-NC-SA).