Measuring and Valuing Co-Benefits
Results-based Financing for Women’s Empowerment Jeannette Gurung, WOCAN
Investing in Women’s Empowerment WOCAN, a leader in women’s empowerment in agriculture and natural resource management, recognized the need to measure the impact of women’s empowerment and accelerate investments in women- particularly women’s groups - to address persistent gaps in their access to resources and capital. Despite growing recognition of the critical role of women in sustainable development, investments in agriculture and environment fail to close the gap (10% of these reach women). Women who are providers of food, education and healthcare for their families and communities are not compensated for this unpaid care labor.
Women Deliver Social Goods
Setting the Standard It’s challenging to determine the best way to create measureable change in the lives of women, so WOCAN and key partners in women’s empowerment and finance developed the W+ Standard and Units. W+ Standard: Measures how organizations, companies, governments and individuals can drive social and economic empowerment for women. The W+ Standard tracks women’s empowerment in six areas: time, income, health, leadership, education and food security. Investors can rely on the W+ Standard of measurement to ensure that progress is made in these six areas when purchasing W+ Units. W+ Units: A social asset for investors to purchase that represents the social and economic value of women. W+ Units allow investors to make a quantifiable impact in the lives of women around the world, while guaranteeing measurable and verifiable results.
Investing in Results Investors that buy W+ Units realize the benefit of empowering women without themselves having to create and manage new programs. W+ Units save organizations and corporations time creating, managing and evaluating a project, while guaranteeing measurable and verifiable results at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. W+ Standard is an investment tool to direct limited budgets in a transparent, accountable way to guarantee measurable impact.
How Investments Work The first W+ project was completed this year in Nepal, where women in rural villages replaced their wood generated stoves with those generated by biogas. This change saved 7200 women in the project 2.2 hours every day. Women used this time saved to increase their income, take on leadership roles in the community, care for children and the elderly, improve their health, and benefit from rare leisure time. The time saved has generated W+ Units that investors can purchase to support women’s empowerment. Each W+ Time Unit is valued at $2.40 and represents an eight-hour day. From each sale, $1.20 of the W+ Units returns to women’s groups and benefits families and communities.
W+ Unit Value Components Time-saving biogas project - Nepal
50 % Direct Share to Women
1
42 % Project Development
2
5%
2 %
1%
W+ Unit Sales
Audit
Fee
3
4
5
1. Financial payment to women’s 3. Sales and marketing costs 5. groups distributed by WOCAN paid to sales team through local financial 4. Verification costs paid to third mechanism party auditors 2. Cost of inputs, baseline and monitoring activities paid out to Project Developer
Registration and issuance fees paid to WOCAN
W+ Units, Carbon credits and benefit stacking • W+ units can be stacked with carbon credits or used issued from standalone projects including non-carbon-related projects • W+ builds a potentially large new market with own buyer segments, prices, rules and administration
climate change
women’s empowerment
• Research suggests that W+ units generate more income than carbon units (for the same project) 1 biogas digester => 3.5 t CO2e/year = US $28 => 830 hr saved/year = US $250
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Making an Investment There are currently two options to invest in women’s empowerment using the W+ Standard: • Go to to purchase W+ Time Units at www.wplus.org/w-projects from the pilot project in Nepal
• Invest in a future W+ project or purchase • Support seed funding for W+ development
• Contact Jeannette Gurung (jeannettegurung@wocan.org • For more information see www.wplus.org