Message from Managing Director

I am excited to join everyone in celebrating SAEDI Consulting's third year. As the beginning of the SAEDI idea and the seed that started SAEDI, which I hope is growing and expanding and being co-created and co-owned by our amazing team I’m really happy to see where we are in 2024. We have grown tremendously in terms of our team, the clients that we've engaged, the topics that we cover, and also the sheer vast knowledge and ideas that we bring to the table when it comes to gender mainstreaming in climate change, environmental management and natural resource management.

I am tremendously proud of what we've been able to achieve. And I say we, because it's we, as a team of incredible associates. We are proud of our record. As a team, we are proud of the partners that we've not only started to work with but our repeat clients that we work with repeatedly . As we look forward, we look to build on in the coming year - engaging with opportunities that provide us with longer-term consulting opportunities, and opportunities that allow us to work in other parts of the world, including Asia, South Asia, the Pacific, as well as expand our work in Africa.

We're proud of the approach we've taken to make sure that we speak and use multiple languages to enhance stakeholder engagement and make sure stakeholders feel welcomed, appreciated and valued by making an effort to speak their local language, where we can. We will also be looking to continue to boost other technical elements over the next two years as well, increasing clientele from other parts of the world to complement the fantastic team we already have.

We are immensely grateful for the journey over the past few years. Thank you for being a part of our story. Here's to many more milestones together! Happy 3rd Anniversary, SAEDI!

Leisa Perch

SIDS4 Conference in Antigua and Barbuda

23rd to 30th May 2023

From the 23rd – 30th of May 2024, SAEDI Consulting (Barbados) Inc. attended the SIDS4 Conference in Antigua and Barbuda. With 2 team members on the ground, including our Managing Director Leisa Perch, our team represented SAEDI Consulting at the SIDS4 Conference and Side Events, CANARI’s Civil Society Summit, the Gender Equality Forum, the Civil Society Forum, the CSO Global Summit, and the Caribbean Climate Justice Alliance’s meeting. We also hosted our own on-site Side Event, Just Finance: EnGENDERing Sustainable Climate Resilience with esteemed panellists, Leisa Perch of SAEDI Consulting, Tonni Brodber from UN Women, Kenita Placide, from ECADE, Naomi Jeremiah of the Ministry of Social and Community Development, Housing, and Gender Affairs Grenada, and Nick Grainger, from WFP.

“All of the things that we are really talking about doing require people to change attitudes, practice, and behaviors. You don't do that by just talking about it. You have to actually invest in it. You have the think about the psychology.”

Leisa Perch

International Women’s Day (IWD) Webinar

Thursday, 21 Mar, 2024

On March 21st, 2024, SAEDI Consulting made another addition to our webinar series with our International Women’s Day webinar, Gender Perspectives in Biodiversity and Finance. Our panel featured Karen McDonald Gayle, from the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund, Keisha Garcia from ANSA Merchant Bank, Stacey Alvarez De La Campa of Climate Rights and Justice International, and Dr. Nikita Ali from the Cropper Foundation. The session was one of our most well-attended sessions to-date, with 60 participants from around the world.

"Women hold diverse biodiversity management knowledge, including sustainable harvesting practices, biodiverse cultivation methods, and seed knowledge, influenced by their roles as agricultural providers, healers, caretakers and leaders in their communities. Recognizing the value of this specialized knowledge is a key factor in advancing climate resilient communities."

Tanya Wragg-Morris, Research &
Policy Analyst

Policy and Regulatory Reform for Resilience

Year 2023-2024

Between 2023-2024, 2 members of the SAEDI Consulting team served as independent consultants and produced a Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) Analysis and Action Plan for CADMUS on behalf of USAID. The multi-country Caribbean project focused on 6 key countries and examined legal and regulatory frameworks for national disaster management, civil society and private sector participation in policy, plans, and regulations.

"Current practices for disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in terms of vulnerable groups focus on women the elderly and children. Policy and Regulatory Reform for Resilience aims to expand the lens of analysis to include ITPs, PWDs, and the LGBTQIA+ community to ensure their socio-economic realities and needs are reflected in the plans, policies and strategies that will shape the Disaster Risk Management sectors in their countries and include them in a lens of analysis and plans so they are better protected and supported in these sectors– to improve climate resilience and ensure that efforts are framed in a Caribbean context."

Kwasi Pierre, Project Manager

Scaling up the Deployment of Integrated Utility Services (IUS) to Support Energy Sector Transformation in the Caribbean Programme

Year 2023-2024

From 2023-2023, SAEDI supported CPCS in developing a Gender Assessment and Action Plan to support countries' transition to renewable energy, focusing on research during 2023. The project focused on ensuring that the transition is just, benefits vulnerable groups, and enables vulnerable groups to participate in the project.

"The key outputs came from the GAP which highlights the gender gaps in the multicounty analyses that need to be addressed so that gender can be mainstreamed in this programme. The multicounty analyses in this project also identified existing and potential barriers that would affect the uptake and adoption of these technologies by women and other marginalized communities."

Roshanna Ramdass, Junior Research Associate

Institutional Gender Training and Sensitization for GCF Accreditation

Year 2023-2024

SAEDI Consulting worked with the Environmental Management Authority and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) to increase gender sensitization through policy development and guidance tools. This also involved developing training materials and conducting training sessions based on the content.

“Each project with SAEDI taught me more and more about environmental issues, about how climate change was affecting lives and livelihoods, and how important gender equality and social inclusion were, to address the impact of climate change. The most exciting project for me, however, was our CCCCC project. The goal was the prepare the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) of Trinidad and Tobago for accreditation as a Direct Access Entity (DEA) of the Green Climate Fund (GCF).”

"I credit this project with a 99% increase in my understanding of the importance of gender in effective environmental management and climate change mitigation efforts. This was the project that pushed me the hardest, it was the first time that I had looked at a Grievance Redress Mechanism.”

Jacqueline Massiah-Simeon, Associate

Sustainable Low and Non-Chemical Development in SIDS – Through the Looking Glass of Gender, Socio-economic drivers and Vulnerable Groups

Year 2023-2024

The project involved a review of policies and legislature surrounding waste and country assessments, examining the awareness, research, and frameworks surrounding chemical and hazardous waste. The data revealed regional challenges, including waste related to end-of-life equipment, water related cultural festivals, climate disaster rebuilding, and infectious disease related waste, considering the need for disaggregated and inclusive data and analysis."

."The BCRC Project was a groundbreaking project for SAEDI specifically because it was one of our first few projects where we got to work on a large group of Caribbean countries at one time. We worked in 12 countries and it was an opportunity where we got to do this really broad cross-section of regional research where we could offer national reports, which were our deliverables- a report for each country- but also a regional analysis of the theme of the project, which was also something unique to SAEDI. Previously, we had been doing and specializing in heavily gender-focused work, but it was one of our breakthrough projects where we got into an area that was new to the team, because BCRC focused on the management of hazardous chemicals and waste. It was different for the entire team where we got to look into this new area and think about gender analysis in a different way."

Asha Natalia Maharaj, Associate