Training Opportunity - Advancing Caribbean Women's Leadership Skills and Political Participation

Women’s equal participation in politics is a fundamental prerequisite for genuine democracy which not only facilitates women’s direct engagement in public decision-making but ensures that the needs of half of the population are taken in to account through the implementation of equitable and just policies.

Women’s participation in the political process as voters and campaigners is high throughout the Caribbean. However, this has not translated into consistent increases in the numbers of women in elected office.

To this end, the Caribbean Institute for Women in Leadership (CIWiL) offersCaribbean women who are already active or aspiring to political or public leadershipan opportunity to develop and build on their leadership and governance capacities, through its Advancing Transformational Leadership for Gender Justice in the Caribbean training programme from 11th – 22^ndJuly in Kingston, Jamaica.

The application process is now open online at www.ciwil.org  and will close 22 June 2011. Applications are invited from women who are emerging or future leaders from Belize, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and Jamaica.The programme includes online and residential training components.

Increasingly, women are seeking to transform politics itself, and women’s groups are focusing on efforts to increase women’s representation on the ballot.CIWiL is working to support the efforts through this highly interactive and in-depth programme which will equip women with the necessary skills to effect transformational leadership in their societies.

This third training programme comes on the heels of the successfully completed session in Saint Lucia last month which saw participants from Belize, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia interacting with leading lecturers, and experts from Government, civil society and the United Nations, including sitting members of Parliament from Antigua and Barbuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Saint Lucia and a former Deputy Prime Minister from Barbados.

This programme is a component of a wider initiative funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), to support CIWIL’s training programme.  Project partners include the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women); the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies (IGDS Mona); and political parties and civil society organisations at the national level.

Further information on the programme background can be found at www.ciwil.org or queries can be addressed to [ Click to reveal ].

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