Source: Economist
At a Week long workshop held last week in Windhoek, Women's Action for Development (WAD) brought stakeholders up to date on its campaign to teach women their rights, and to raise awareness of human rights issues with a gender bias. This campaign is sponsored by the European Union. Head of the EU Delegation, Ambassador Raul Fentes Milani attended the workshop.

Veronica de Klerk, executive director of Women's Action for Development (WAD) said the training workshops officially kicked-off during August 2011, at which time 40 young rural trainers of WAD started to conduct the workshops in the 107 constituencies of the 13 regions while other Community Voice members acted as caterers, interpreters, recruiters of workshop participants and also took care of logistics.

"This resulted in 42 workshops having been conducted between August 2011 and May 2012, in all 107 constituencies of the country reaching 1300 community members thus far. The eventual target of this 3-year project is to conduct a total of 400 workshops in all 107 constituencies, and to reach 9000 people at the end of the project during April 2014," said De Klerk.

The workshop was well attended and well received by women, especially in the rural areas.

De Klerk said a common concern is that, although most participants report that they are aware of the Constitution, they have never actually seen a copy of it, or read any part of it.

"We have now reached the stage where stock should be taken of how the training of the general public, through numerous workshops, has been progressing since its inception late last year," De Klerk said

The project which was launched in September last year and is funded by the Delegation of the European Union to Namibia and the Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung, contributes to a gender sensitive Namibian society where human rights are protected and women enjoy equal opportunities without fear of discrimination, marginalization or harassment.

The EU has committed N$4.8 million to this project.

"These funds were approved to train women in general, as well as law enforcement agencies, constituency councillors, journalists, teachers, parliamentarians, government representatives, party members, spiritual leaders and traditional authorities," she said.

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