Fight Poverty: Educate Women in Panama

This year, at Fundación Calicanto, we decided to broaden our horizons, and focused on working with communities, local organizations and companies towards empowering women, people and marginalized groups in the city of Panamá.

In order to do that, between the months of February and April we kept busy, creating and teaching 7 workshops, talks and lectures across a spectrum of organizations, communities and companies.

We started in february, with a series of team building workshops for teenagers living with HIV, in partnership with the AID for AIDS foundation, as well as another one for orphan and at risk kids, as a joint effort with Aldeas SOS.

In march, we went a little further, teaching communities in Verazcruz and Santa Ana a Self-Confidence induction and full-on workshop. We also educated Collaborators and Employers in the skills for work module our graduates go through, and gave Female Empowerment talks to Fossil employees.

In april, we continued our empowerment journey, this time via qualifiations for young musicians of the Danilo Perez Foundation on life projects and lectures about female empowerment at ARIFA (a panamenian law firm).

Looking forward, we hope to continue our work, reaching new communities and creating change wherever we can. We’re not planning to stop anytime soon, and we hope you’ll continue giving us your support, so we can keep transforming lives together.

In the meantime, we’re happy to announce that we’re organizing everything for our next CAPTA in July. We’re sure that, with the help of the alliances we have made with other ONGs , we’ll have a wide spectrum of beneficiaries for this program.

March has just gone by, and in honor of Women’s history month, we look back at some of the women we have empowered so far, the lives they’ve made for themselves and those they have made for the people around them.

Such is the case of Ingrid, a graduate of 2018’s program, that left the course with a completely different mindset and a newfound respect for herself: “Right now we’re taking a step forward, and starting the carreer, because the time has come to get out there and work, with a different and optimistic outlook, focused on flourishing and improving our quality of life from the inside out. Work dignifies and we have to chase our dreams with perseverance and courage in order to be happy and shape our own futures.”.

Through success stories like Ingrid’s and those of other women like her, the empowerment grows, extending to other women and people who feel stuck in a cycle of poverty or violence. They prove that poverty is not a life sentence, and for poeple who feel they have no way out or those who have given up on hope, they serve as a reminder that there is always a way of reaching personal and economical independence, and through it, finally being free.

At CAPTA, we believe in giving tools for the financial empowerment of women. Training them in tourism related industries like restaurants and hotels has allowed them to access to job positions in renowned institutions like The Amercian Trade Hotel, Niko’s Cafe, J.W Marriott Hotels and Maito. Thanks to their hard work and your contributions, 72% of our graduates, from employees to entrepreneurs, are now part of the labour force and have success stories like Ingrid’s.

Links:

• Testimonial video of Maria Luisa, one of our graduates.