YEU has assisted more than 60 women groups from Yogyakarta Province and Central Java Provinsi since 2015. The woman groups had conducted risk mapping at the beginning of the assistance and mapped the disaster risk in their respective area. The disaster risks identified by the women group are flood, landslides, drought, volcano eruption, and pandemic.  

The women groups have been working to reduce the risks by establishing the resilience practices such as a waste bank, food bank, delay selling, goat raising, production of organic fertilizer, urban vegetable garden, and vegetable cultivation using aquaponic and hydroponic methods, and so on.

There are women groups successfully developing and scaling up their resilience activities, however when running and maintaining the practices, the women groups are facing administrative and technical challenges. To tackle the challenges, YEU with the support of the Huairou Commission conducted some activities to gather the women grassroots leaders and provide space to learn from the experts and each other. The virtual activities conducted in 2021 are village planning and budgeting training, public speaking, digital literacy, and proposal development training.

From 15-18 November 2021, 30 women groups participated at the offline local-to-local dialogue with policy stakeholders from Central Java and Yogyakarta province that were represented by the Agriculture and Food Security Office, Environmental and Forest Office, Regional Disaster Management Agency, Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (Climatology Station) of Yogyakarta. The women group in the dialogue, which was attended by waste bank groups, women farmer groups, PKK groups (family welfare groups), managed to deliver aspirations to the related stakeholder to support their resilience activities.  

The discussion with the regional disaster management agency of Central Java has identified the potentials for the women groups to form Destana/Tagana (Disaster Resilience Village) in their region as well as encourage the involvement of women in the disaster management from the family as the smallest unit to the community. Most of the groups have contributed and experienced disaster management especially in the management of volcano eruptions and typhoon disasters.

Furthermore, women groups encouraged the Environmental and Forest Office of Yogyakarta Province to organize more partnership and intense assistance to the community managing waste bank as well as connect the community’s waste bank to TPS 3R (Center for Waste Management: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) to address the issues of waste management and processing that requires more adequate capacity and technology.

Dialogue between women's groups and relevant stakeholders is expected to improve the resilience of women's groups through harmonization with government programs and advocacy to address various issues in their respective regions. This also encourages the role of women's groups as actors of change in their area.