Women Driving Peace and Economic Development

NGO Ba Futuru in partnership with Organizasaun Haburas Moris (OHM) just finished the pilot of the Women Driving Peace and Economic Development Project at the end of February 2018. The Project has worked to enhance women’s ability to participate in the economy and mitigate conflict in their lives thus advancing stabilization, peace and recovery. This life-enhancing project was supported by the Canada Fund Local Initiatives.

Peter MacArthur, Ambassador of Canada to Indonesia and Timor-Leste, expressed his support for the project: "Canada is committed to empowering women in all areas of their life and reducing gender-based violence. We are proud to have supported a project that has yielded such positive and tangible results for women in Timor-Leste, and which has given them a voice within their community." 

There were significant outcomes from this project including providing life skills and knowledge to enhance women’s capacity in regard to managing their own businesses, identifying required resources and support from other stakeholders, and encouraging women to make decisions regarding household finances. The trainings also empowered women to contribute to conflict resolution, as well as educate them about gender-based violence.

Before and after the training participants were provided with assessment surveys (or interviewed if illiterate) so that there could be a gauge of their changes in attitudes and knowledge. Feedback from participants has been very interesting. When asked if they believed they could resolve conflict in the family and community without using violence before the training, 53% said yes, but afterwards this increased to 74%.

When asked if a person hits a member of their family inside their house, if this is a violation of the law, beforehand 47% said yes they believed it was a violation and afterwards this increased to 95% who said yes they now knew it was a violation. 

A 43-year-old, head of a women’s group, who participated in the Women’s Economic Empowerment training states “I am pleased with the trainings delivered by dedicated and enthusiastic facilitators from Ba Futuru. The training has provided essential information about running a business, identifying existing resources and how to seek assistance from local organizations to run a business, and gain deeper understanding of budgeting. Before taking part in the training, I did not realize that there are support and resources available to help us start our own business. With the trainings, I can now set my own goals and have my own action plan. I highly recommended that this training will be continued in the future”.

Surveys conducted show that this project has had a significant impact improving the livelihood of participants in the Bobonaro District. Post-training survey shows that after the trainings, 95% of participants felt confident to manage their own business, compared to 63% from the pre-training survey. 

A 22-year-old female participant commented, “I’m grateful to participate in the training. Now, I have a clear understanding about conflict, methods and approaches to resolve a conflict, and the skills to make decisions. Often, we resolve conflict with violence, but now I can resolve conflict in a non-violent way. I look forward to sharing this information with friends and family.”

Perhaps, the most successful story of this project is that women now feel empowered to run a business, feel encouraged to take part in conflict resolution, as well as raising their awareness about gender-based violence. Several participants were inspired to seek assistance from local stakeholders to support their small businesses such as opening a clothes alteration shop. Moreover, most participants’ state that they are now more aware of gender-based violence and can better solve conflict within their family and in the community. The majority of participants engaged in the training also demonstrated noticeable changes in their skill level and knowledge in building their own business, and feel inspired to contribute to their community.

Due to this pilot project’s merits and successes, support for delivering a further 3-year version of the project in Bobonaro Municipality and on Atauto Island is being provided by Misereor, the German Catholic Bishops' Organization for Development Cooperation, together with a small grant from the US Embassy in Timor-Leste.

Additional co-funding for the project is still required, so please share the opportunity to support this project with family and friends that you think might be interested in supporting!

The last several months have been filled with exciting progress on the Women Driving Peace and Economic Develop project that Ba Futuru is undertaking with the local organization Haburas Moris (OHM) based in Bobonaro Municipality.

We are successfully raising awareness of women’s issues, providing training that encourages women’s empowerment in the domestic decision-making and economic environment in which they live. It encourages entrepreneurial thinking, building business skills and confidence with the goal of their creating better livelihoods whilst also addressing disproportionate economic opportunities for women compared to men.

The project has included four community theater performances that have taken place in four different market places with an audience of more than 500 people at each performance. Dramatizing the information allows important knowledge transfer and behavior change messages to be understood across the community.

One 44-year-old female who is a seller in the market place said: “I am very happy with the theater performance I watched because through it I was able to gain information about how to run my own business. Every day I am busy selling goods and do not have time to watch television. In addition, I am happy because I can now better understand the resources that I have to increase my business. I want this kind of theater to continue to be performed in the market place, so that we can understand more on how I can be more successful in my business.”

Thus far, we have also worked to empower 19 women with new skills through eight intensive days of training on topics including economic empowerment, conflict resolution, gender-based violence prevention, access to referral networks, budget planning, business promotion and marketing. We’ve also provided women guidance on making economic decisions in the household.

We also held focus group discussions in the target community before the training to encourage women to be able to participate.

One 45-year-old female said, “I am happy to participate in this activity because I can learn and share information with other participants about the importance of women in managing their own business and sharing the household work with their partner. I can now understand that when women make the decision to run a business it can help to increase the family income, and I understand that men can also do household work, not only women.” 

Another 43-year-old female who is the head of a women’s group said, “I am very happy to participate in this training because it provided me with information about how to run a business, investigate what my existing resources are, better understand budgeting and gave me the opportunity to make an action plan to make things happen. Before attending the training, I did not realize that in our group we have different kinds of resources that can help us to increase our businesses. Now I can also better budget for and manage our income. Moreover, I appreciated the training because I was able to understand how to realize my objective through developing an action plan. I would like to recommend continuing the training.

Before and after the training participants were provided with assessment surveys so that there could be a gauge of their changes in attitudes and knowledge. Feedback from participants has been very interesting. When asked if they believed they could resolve conflict in the family and community without using violence before the training, 53% said yes, but afterwards this increased to 74%.

When asked if they agreed if a woman or man should hit their wife or husband when they disagree about spending money that was not according to their plan, beforehand 32% agreed and afterwards this decreased to 11%.

When asked if a person hits a member of their family inside their house, if this is a violation of the law, beforehand 47% said yes they believed it was a violation and afterwards this increased to 95% who said yes they knew it was a violation.

Participants all aksed that we continue to support rural Timorese women through this project.