Webinar Recording
Event Details
Global events, such as pandemics, financial crises and synchronized food shocks, propagate and interact more rapidly than in the past and with greater geographic spread. These risks have disproportionate impacts on people and places in the Global South. All too often, the solutions presented are top-down and framed in an outdated North-South perspective.
Working together in partnerships helps build resilience and promotes locally led development. The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) brings together over 65 organizations from the local to global scale to unleash the innovative knowledge and potential of a diverse range of actors, especially from those at the local level.
This webinar will feature Nathanial (Nate) Matthews, CEO of GRP, in a fireside chat with Sheela Patel, Jen Abdella and Shehnaaz Moosa as they discuss how working in partnership helps promote locally led development.
About the Speakers
Dr. Nate Matthews is Chief Executive Officer at the GRP. Prior to becoming CEO, Nate led GRP’s resilience innovation investments as GRP’s Program Director. Before GRP, he worked in leadership roles with the CGIAR, UNEP, the International WaterCentre, NGOs and in the private sector. He has 20+ years’ experience managing, surfacing and scaling hundreds of resilience and adaptation projects and programs in partnership with governments, NGOs and the private sector across more than 30 countries. Nate’s expertise has been recognized through contributions to various global networks, boards and committees including as a Lead Author in The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, an Obama Foundation Mentor, a Munich Re Risk Award Judge and as part of the leadership team of the Ocean, Risk and Resilience Action Alliance. He has a PhD in Geography from King’s College London, has published two books and over 60 journal articles.
Dr. Shehnaaz Moosa is a Director at the not for profit SouthSouthNorth based in Cape Town, South Africa. She is the Director of the Southern Africa Climate Finance Partnership and the Climate and Development Network. She has extensive experience in the climate change space and has actively engaged with a range of issues that relate to climate and capacity development as her career started off lecturing in Chemical Engineering at the University of Cape Town. As the first woman of color to obtain a PhD in Chemical Engineering in South Africa she has first hand knowledge of the challenges that marginalized groups face and is committed to making a positive impact on the African continent.
Sheela Patel is the founder and director of the Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), an NGO that has been working since 1984 to support community organizations of the urban poor in their efforts to access secure housing and basic amenities and seek their right to the city. SPARC is based in Mumbai and works in partnership with the National Slum Dweller Federation and Mahila Milan. Patel is widely recognized around the world for seeking urgent attention to the issues of urban poverty, housing and infrastructure onto the radar of governments, bilateral and international agencies, foundations and other organizations. She is a funder amongst many of Slum Dwellers International, a transnational social movement of the urban poor, whose board she previously chaired.
Jen Abdella is the Program Director for Climate Resilient Development at the Near East Foundation (NEF). At NEF, sheprovides strategic and technical leadership in global strategy development, program design, and partnership building related to climate change, sustainable agriculture and natural resources management. Working with her colleagues in the Middle East and Africa, she has worked extensively on local climate finance, climate smart agriculture, and resource governance. Jen brings over 20 years of experience working with public and private sector stakeholders, researchers, community-based groups, and international development stakeholders to safeguard the environment and protect resource-based livelihoods. Prior to joining NEF in 2014, Jen practiced environmental law.