We are delighted to have strengthened our international team supporting women’s empowerment through the provision of verification services for WOCAN’s W+ Standard and welcome Sue Osborne, Janice McMahon and Barbara Toole O’Neill to our W+ verification team.
Sue is an experienced SAN Social Auditor and social enterprise leader based in the UK, whilst Janice and Barbara join us from the US based Aster Global bringing expertise in environmental consultancy, GHG validation and verification services.
SAN provides independent verification services for the W+ Standard that enables project developers and implementers to recognise the impact of their activities in terms of women’s empowerment and to channel funds directly to those women as part of their overall commitment to sustainability.
The W+ measures women’s empowerment in six domains: Time, Income & Assets, Health, Leadership, Education & Knowledge and Food Security.
It produces quantified women-benefit units that contribute towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Climate Financing and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) targets.
As the application of the W+ Standard grows, the integral role women have in mitigating climate change becomes ever more clear. Appreciating the importance of both issues, WOCAN is now working with Verra to streamline the assessment processes for both carbon benefit and women’s empowerment aspects of projects.
Here at SAN, we are continuing to support this innovative approach and have been building capacity internationally, hosting an online programme for W+ Verifiers from across the world, and look forward to welcoming new members to our W+ verification team in 2021.
For more information about W+ Verification please see our W+ Standard verification pages (5.0) or contact: Social Audit Network (SAN)
The W+ Standard is an initiative of Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN), a women-led international membership network of women and men professionals and women's associations. www.wocan.org
