Charting a better path for St Bess women
Published:Saturday | May 7, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Andre Gordon, Gleaner Writer
STANMORE, St Elizabeth
THE RURAL woman in Jamaican culture is a figure of strength and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
She has always been an innovator and a trendsetter, striving to make life better for her children, especially in the absence of a steady father figure. It was the rural Jamaican woman who started the current market system we enjoy today. Rural women from as far as Portland and St Elizabeth are permanent fixtures at Coronation Market and other markets across Jamaica.
Even though rural women have been at the forefront of society's development, they sometimes get left behind since most woman-power movements and support groups are usually located in the Corporate Area.
Recruitment drive
Understanding this challenge, former executive director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs, Dr Glenda Simms, sought to start an organisation in her home parish of St Elizabeth to attend to the needs of these women.
The organisation, aptly named St Elizabeth Women Ltd, has been in operation since 2008, but took on a new impetus in 2011 with a massive recruitment drive, which has led to a total of seven groups operating in communities such as Santa Cruz, Malvern, Southfield and Stanmore.
"We are promoting sustainable development in our communities by helping these women to develop the economy at the grass-roots level through farming horticulture and craft," Simms told The Gleaner.
She added: "Reproductive health is also important as well as parenting skills."
The group, which currently has a membership of more than 250, has been involved in empowerment workshops, which are geared towards the personal development of its members. "We are very grateful to the Rural Agricultural Authority (RADA) for providing technical support as well as tools, and seeds to our group. It has helped us immensely in our bid for development. Food For The Poor has also been there with us right from the start and we have also benefited from Canadian International Development Agency," Simms said.
The St Elizabeth Women Ltd has started the process of community renewal, and is impacting the lives of girls and women through a process of education and empowerment.
They have set as their objectives:
To ensure the linking of the community's needs to the policies and programmes of both central and local government
To integrate gender equality and the empowerment of women in development at the levels of the household and the community
To find sustainable ways of poverty reduction through the utilisation of traditional modes of production within a framework of true participation of everyone in the community
To ensure access to literacy programmes, parenting initiatives, safety and conflict resolution techniques in rural areas
To balance life, leisure and the world of work to enhance women's autonomy and creativity
To deal effectively with the social ills of teenage pregnancy, trafficking in persons, gender-based violence and the underachievement of poor boys and girls in the parish
To return to the values that promote safe communities
To find ways to ensure caring, sharing and basic decency at the level of the individual and the group.