GWIA 2006 in Vancouver was a peer learning and exchange workshop that allowed grassroots women leaders to teach, learn, and debate one another’s approaches to improving their living and working conditions. Organizing innovative practice thematically, the GWIA format is participatory, practical, and organized to enable attendees to identify groups they would like to link with to strengthen the effectiveness of their local interventions.

• GWIA strengthened grassroots women’s capacities to communicate and transfer the skills and knowledge they have in reducing women’s poverty, improving local housing and living conditions, and in fostering local governance that is open and responsive to poor communities,

• GWIA enabled grassroots women’s groups to identify other community innovators from whom they’d like to learn and undertake peer technical transfers in the future,
• GWIA coordinated the participation of GWIA attendees and other Huairou Commission partners in the World Urban Forum

• GWIA analyzed and debated the accomplishments and challenges of innovative women’s groups in the context of policies, programs, and power relationships that support or obstruct women’s organized participation in community development and settlement strengthening.
• GWIA ensured that grassroots women’s perspectives, knowledge, and recommendations are debated and mainstreamed across WUF themes, and that the expertise and authority of grassroots women leaders receive greater recognition from institutions and individuals of influence at this global networking and priority setting event.