Status
Ongoing
The Caribbean Organizations for a Resilient Environment (CORE) Project helps Caribbean communities adapt to climate change by strengthening local organizations and empowering women to lead environmental solutions.
CORE focuses on eight Caribbean countries: Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Suriname. The project supports Conservation Trust Funds, women’s rights organizations, environmental groups and youth organizations that are working on the frontlines of climate and biodiversity challenges.
CORE supports the mainstreaming of inclusive and gender responsive approaches throughout the Caribbean Sustainable Finance Architecture so that climate and biodiversity solutions reach local communities in practical and lasting ways.
The project focuses on four main areas of work:
Through the Gender Smart Facility, CORE invests USD 3 million in grants for community level projects. Funding is distributed through the eight participating Conservation Trust Funds.
Supported projects must demonstrate clear benefits for women and vulnerable groups and focus on inclusive, gender responsive nature based solutions, including:
The Facility helps ensure that women in all their diversity can access biodiversity and climate finance at both community and national levels.
CORE is establishing the Gender Smart Facility (GSF) Hub as a regional learning and knowledge exchange platform. The Hub will:
CORE strengthens Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning systems so that organizations can:
Partner coordination and system architecture design of the Gender Smart Facility and CORE capacity building approach.
Baseline governance and practice standards assessments, delivery of initial training, mentorship planning, and launch of the first Gender Smart Facility grants.
Consolidation of functional frameworks and governance resources, continued strategic mentorship, and publication of initial CORE knowledge products.
Scaling successful structural approaches and deeply integrating governance, gender equity, and risk management modules across National Conservation Trust Funds.
Final holistic impact assessment, structural documentation of execution lessons, and embedding the Gender Smart Facility Hub cleanly within the CBF.
Boards will demonstrate clearer oversight, stronger accountability systems and improved alignment with regional Practice Standards.
Partners will integrate gender-responsive approaches into planning, project design and monitoring, with better tools to support inclusive decision making.
Women and vulnerable communities will see increased access to funding through the Gender Smart Facility and more inclusive nature-based solutions.
The Gender Smart Facility Hub will support long-term learning, peer exchange and dissemination of tools and case studies across the Caribbean.
Participating organisations will strengthen policies, systems and internal capacities to support transparent, resilient and sustainable operations.
Practical tools, assessments and guidance documents will remain available to support ongoing institutional strengthening across the region.
CORE is implemented by the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund in partnership with Global Affairs Canada.
Through this partnership, CORE channels resources directly to communities and organizations so they can design and implement inclusive and gender responsive nature based solutions that protect both people and the environment.
