Increased Access to Finance For People-centered and Inclusive Local Resilience

The financial implications of global market fluctuations in recent years have increased challenges to government budgets, development funding, and overall allocation of resources. This impact is further amplified by the increasing disaster events and climatic changes across the Asia Pacific. In turn, local communities are seeing their access to funds decrease while their needs to prepare for and respond to disaster events is growing exponentially. This issue is further amplified for communities which may be at greater risk, including women, children, and persons with disabilities, among others. To fill this gap, this session looks to bring together representatives of governments, local communities, and international organizations to bring forward innovative approaches for funding of local community initiatives. This includes experience sharing from different countries in scaling up the efforts and providing community leaders with resources on different funding streams to access for local resilience and building their capacity on receiving and implementing these resources.