Article: Salome Donkor
THE United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has a positive corporate strategy to integrate women’s empowerment and equality issues into the organisation’s core business. The organisation does this by enhancing opportunities for women in self-employment through gender mainstreaming.
Gender mainstreaming was defined by the United Nations Economic and Social Council in 1997 as 'a strategy for making women's concerns and experiences and those of men an integral dimension of the policies and programmes in the political, economic and social spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated'.
This means that gender mainstreaming should be everyone's job – not the responsibility of a small number of specialists.
Investing in policies and programmes to empower women and promote gender equality is seen as an important step towards the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This requires total commitment and adherence to policies and programmes that will promote this objective.
One woman who has resolved to work in pursuit of this strategy is Ms Hillary Gbedemah, a former legal awareness officer of the Volta Regional Office of the Women in Law and Development (WiLDAF), Ghana.
Through her initiative, a programme dubbed “Women on the Move” is to be organised with support from Vital Voices Global Partnership of the United States of America (USA), to equip young women with entrepreneurial skills to empower them economically.
An initial training programme, which is designed to help unemployed young women identify their potential and obstacles to achieving their goals, is scheduled to take place in Accra on August 22 and 23, this year. It seeks to accept applications from women aged 22 to 30 who wish to participate in the upcoming training programme.
Elaborating on the programme, Ms Gbedemah, who presently works with the Law Institute, said she had been involved in issues related to women’s rights for many years and had found out that a lot of women were in a ‘tight corner’ because of lack of empowerment.
“I observed that a number of unemployed women only needed to be assisted to develop business plans and ideas to go into small-scale businesses,” she said, adding that “these women want jobs but they lack the ability to do the small things they can do as entrepreneurs”.
Consequently, she approached Vital Voices Global Partnership of the USA to find out what could be done to help unemployed young women develop their entrepreneurial skills, and that yielded a positive response.
She said the training programme was an opportunity for participants to learn how to draw business plans that were feasible and types of businesses that were viable, and acquire start-up capital, as well as get enlightened on the advantages of record keeping.
She also indicated that their backgrounds would be studied and they would be attached to mentors to mentor and track them for six months, after which a follow-up programme would be organised to monitor their performance.
Asked about other assistance that would be offered the participants apart from training, she said depending on their business plans, those who needed funding would be supported to explore sources of funding currently available, adding that efforts would be made to look elsewhere when these available sources were exhausted.
Ms Gbedemah indicated that another programme would be organised for students in Ho, who have formed business clubs, to inculcate in them the spirit of business initiative for them to go into small-scale businesses like petty trading, while on holidays.
She was optimistic that unemployed young women would take advantage of the programme to sharpen their business skills to enhance their living standards.
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