Women Driving Peace and Economic Development

Over the last few months the project team has conducted two types of trainings, one on women’s economic empowerment and the other on conflict resolution, gender-based violence prevention and referral pathways with women in Bobonaro municipality (for 28 and 25 women respectively). At the same time, the project team and Ba Futuru’s management team also have provided the capacity building to OHM staff (OHM is our core partner for the project). This capacity building has been primarily in the areas of the finance systems development, website development and organizational and project management.

A 38 years old female business owner commented on the impact of the training, “From this training I learnt to identify assets to support my business, the importance of women leaders, and how to make my individual action plan to progress my business. After the training, I have begun to put into practice what I learnt, thus improving my business. The information and knowledge that I learnt from the training I have been able to use effectively.”

Ba Futuru also did pre and post survey in order to gauge change brought about by the two trainings:

• 68% of participants stated that they believed they had the skills and ability in order to start and manage their own business before the training, which increased to 100%.
• 12% of participants stated that they believed they had the ability to resolve conflicts in their family or community without violence before the training, which increased to 100%.
• 7% of participants stated they had knew the factors that contributed to gender based violence in Timor-Leste before the training, this increased to 100%.
• 5% of participants stated that they knew about the Domestic Violence Laws of Timor-Leste before the training, this increased to 100%.
• 5% of participants were able to accurately list places to refer victims of domestic violence before the training, this increased to 95%.

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