Women at the Frontlines: How Grassroots Leadership Strengthens Climate and Disaster Resilience

By Ioana Creitaru, UNDP Crisis Bureau, with Tekle Bregvadze, Women’s National League, Georgia and Ayşe Kaşıkırık, Mor Meridven, Türkiye

May 20, 2026

“When crises happen, panic is often not caused by the disaster itself, but by the lack of knowledge and preparedness. I learned that as a child, and it shaped everything I do today.”
— Tekle Bregvadze, Deputy Chairwoman, Women’s National League, Georgia

From Lived Experience to Leadership

Tekle Bregvadze’s understanding of resilience was forged early, amid conflict and insecurity. As a child in Georgia, she saw how fear intensified when communities lacked information, planning and trust. That lived experience became the foundation of her leadership and of the Women’s National League (WNL), the organization she helped build to turn preparedness from an abstract concept into daily practice.

WNL was created to bridge a persistent gap between grassroots communities and formal governance and security systems. From the outset, it challenged a familiar narrative that positions women primarily as victims during crises. Instead, WNL has consistently demonstrated that women are strategic leaders of disaster risk reduction, early warning and early action, strengthening preparedness, response, and readiness to recover.

As a partner supporting countries to strengthen resilience, UNDP has consistently found that locally led approaches, particularly those driven by women, are among the most effective in reducing risk and accelerating recovery. This community‑driven approach comes to life through collaborative work with rural women, where WNL, supported by UN Women, has helped translate disaster risk reduction into practical, locally grounded action, strengthening preparedness while elevating women’s leadership at the village level.

Photo: Women in Telavi participate in disaster risk reduction training led by the Women’s National League, with support from UN Women, building first‑aid skills and strengthening community preparedness.

Credit: Women’s National League.

Starting with no funding and driven by volunteer commitment, WNL has grown into a critical resilience actor in Georgia. Its work includes retraining women Members of Parliament on crisis management, delivering preparedness training to women and children in crisis‑affected and displaced communities, and developing inclusive approaches for persons with disabilities. More recently, WNL has expanded to Georgia’s high‑mountain and remote regions, areas where climate change is accelerating landslides and avalanches, extreme weather events, food security, and isolation, often beyond the reach of national preparedness systems.

Yet Tekle is clear about the barriers that remain. Women‑led grassroots organizations like WNL possess trust, legitimacy, and ready‑to‑implement solutions, but remain under‑resourced and structurally excluded from sustained financing and policy influence. For Tekle, global frameworks such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction – a strategy focused on reducing disaster risk and strengthening resilience in communities and countries – are not symbolic commitments. They are practical survival guides, effective only when they meaningfully connect local leadership with global resources.

Tekle’s story was shared in Geneva as part of a policy dialogue designed to elevate such connections. The dialogue was convened by UNDP, UN Women and UNDRR on the occasion of the UNECE Regional Forum on Sustainable Development 2026. It underscored a broader pattern: across contexts, women are already leading climate action and disaster risk reduction, often without formal recognition. The gap is not capacity, nor commitment: it is access. Access to decision‑making power, to long‑term financing, and to systems willing to share authority and institutionalize local leadership.

It was in this space, where local realities meet global platforms, that another powerful example emerged, shaped by a very different crisis but animated by the same core truth.

Institutionalizing Women’s Power in Recovery

In the aftermath of the February 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye, a familiar divide became visible. Formal response systems struggled under immense pressure, while women at the community level mobilized immediately to coordinate aid, identify unmet needs, sustain social networks, and restore trust. What emerged was not informal support, but decisive leadership exercised without mandate and largely without recognition.

This reality shaped the work of Mor Merdiven (The Purple Staircase), a women‑led organization in Türkiye grounded in the belief that recovery is not only about rebuilding infrastructure, but about transforming governance. Its founder Ayşe Kaşıkırık argues that disaster recovery fails when women’s leadership is treated as temporary, supplementary, or peripheral. Lasting resilience requires institutionalizing women’s power, not merely inviting participation.

Working across severely affected provinces such as Hatay, Adana, and Gaziantep, Mor Merdiven focuses on building structured leadership pathways that move women from neighborhood action to municipal decision‑making. Leadership, in this model, is deliberate, sustained, and supported through mentorship, formal representation, and access to authority.

Photo: Women coming together in Hatay, the epicenter of the February 6 earthquakes, during field activities focused on strengthening women’s cooperatives and local solidarity networks.

Credit: Mor Merdiven.

The organization’s experience points to three critical shifts for resilient recovery. First, moving from participation to decision‑making power, ensuring women hold formal roles in recovery and planning bodies. Second, shifting from short‑term projects to long‑term systems, embedding gender‑responsive approaches into national disaster frameworks and financing mechanisms. Third, reframing women from being labeled primarily as “vulnerable groups” to being recognized as first responders, planners, accountability actors, and system innovators.

From Recognition to Action

The experiences shared by two women leaders, Tekle Bregvadze and Ayşe Kaşıkırık, reveal a common message: women‑led grassroots organizations are indispensable actors in crisis and disaster risk management. Their leadership improves preparedness, accelerates recovery, and strengthens social cohesion. Yet without sustained resources, institutional pathways, and political will, their impact remains constrained.

These stories, brought together through a shared dialogue among practitioners and policymakers, highlight a broader reality: women are already leading resilience efforts across diverse contexts. What remains is to close the gap between recognition and support, ensuring access to decision‑making power, long‑term financing, and systems that institutionalize, rather than overlook, local leadership.

The discussion reinforced several key insights: meaningful participation requires power and financing, not consultation alone; global frameworks such as the Sendai Gender Action Plan provide a strong foundation for advancing gender equality and women’s leadership, but results depend on localization and partnership; and resilience is most effective when those closest to risk are at the center of decision‑making.

Photo: Tekle Bregvadze (Women’s National League, Georgia) and Ayşe Kaşıkırık (Mor Merdiven, Türkiye) join Ioana Creitaru (UNDP), moderator, and participants at the UNECE Regional Forum on Sustainable Development 2026 in Geneva, highlighting women’s leadership in climate and disaster resilience.

Credit: UNDP

In support of this agenda, an emerging partnership between UNDP, UN Women, and UNDRR is advancing gender‑responsive disaster risk reduction and strengthening climate resilience across Europe and Central Asia. By bringing together global frameworks, policy processes, and community‑driven solutions, this collaboration aims to close the gap between local leadership and systemic change. It supports the localization of the Sendai Gender Action Plan, by strengthening gender responsive governance, expanding access to financing and sex- age- and disability-disaggregated data, and ensuring that women and women‑led organizations are recognized as driving agents and central actors in preparedness, response, and recovery. Together, these efforts are helping to embed women’s leadership not only as a principle but as an operational reality, positioning it as a core pillar of resilient, inclusive, and risk‑informed development.

Moving from local voices to global action should not be simply aspirational. The task ahead is to ensure that women’s leadership is recognized, resourced, and embedded as a cornerstone of climate resilience and disaster risk reduction.