Successfully Completes 9-Month Women Empowerment Training To Break Down Barriers To Women Participation

With support from the German Foreign Office, through Zivik Funding Program, the Center for Security Studies and Development 9CENSAD) has successfully completed a nine month women’s empowerment project in six counties in Liberia, CENSAD said over the weekend.

The project titled:  Amplifying Local Women Voices: Understanding and Breaking Down the Barriers to Women Participation in the Liberian Reconciliation and Peace Building Process” sought to strengthen women’s representation in Liberia’s reconciliation process and ultimately render women a major implementer of peace building and reconciliation processes at the local level, said a CENSAD press release.

The project, which consisted of four major interventions, was implemented in Rivercess, Cape Mount, Lofa, Grand Gedeh, Nimba and Sinoe Counties.  The first intervention undertook the pioneering attempt to acquire systematic, in-depth knowledge about the drivers of Liberian women’s systematic exclusion from the reconciliation process.

As part of the project, CENSSAD conducted a total of 1200 interviews with local women in the six counties to examine the barriers that underline their neglect in the reconciliation process. This was followed by separate town hall meetings for women themselves and town hall meetings between women and local stakeholders, including local officials, youth, traditional and religious leaders.  These dialogues were intended to foster intra-community dialogue among women and other local stakeholders and to further develop strategies and formulate recommendations about how to address the barriers identified during the interviews.

During these meetings, women were given the opportunity to openly discuss what they themselves could do within their communities to make a larger contribution to the reconciliation process and what kind of external support they would need from the local stakeholders to overcome the barriers that have prevented them from doing so in the past.

The town hall meetings were followed by tailored training workshops, which were designed to provide local women with the necessary tools to advocate for their own inclusion in peace building and reconciliation processes.

The last intervention was Radio Round Table Discussions, which were conducted on local community radios to amplify the reach of the project across each county.  The radio round table hosted local leaders, authorities, civil society organizations from the different counties who participated in the County Level Dialogues and provided information on the key elements discussed during the dialogue’s sessions.

Meanwhile, Mr. Charles M. Johnnick, Program Assistant of CENSSAD, has commended local women groups in the six counties for their contribution to the overall success of the project.

In a related development, as part of the overall implementation of the project, Zivik Funding Program has satisfactorily completed a comprehensive audit of the project activities.