The ACTEW Blog

Women's organizations have developed innovative initiatives to respond to some of the policy and economic challenges for women in their communities.

• The Rural Women Take Action on Poverty Committee of Huron, Perth, Grey and Bruce Counties has recently partnered with Rural Women Making Change Research Alliance in a research and community development project aimed at unraveling the workings of municipal governments so that women can access them to affect local change.
  
  
• Women Today of Huron offers "We Belong Here" in which participants learn about citizenship and their rights as women, healthy relationships and local services. They strategize how to utilize new skills and knowledge for individual and collective benefit, building women's confidence in their ability to improve their communities in south-western Ontario.
  
  
• In South River, Women's Own Resource Centre's Rural Outreach Program Endeavor (ROPE) provides mobile self-employment workshops with a focus on economic success and balanced living. You can learn more about ROPE on ACTEW's profiles of programs that serve women well.
  
  
• In 2005, Rural Women Making Change partnered with Women's Employment Resource Centre (WERC) of Woodstock to provide a pre-employment program for women living in the 401 corridor communities where manufacturing is replacing agriculture. The program introduced women to the expectations and workplace culture of the male-dominated manufacturing industry and guided them through the rigorous testing that such employers use when hiring.
  
  
• Currently WERC also offers a networking opportunity for immigrant women. Immigrant issues are rarely acknowledged by rural service delivery, making immigrant women in rural communities twice as invisible.
  
  
• Further afield, the Northwest Territories Status of Women developed "A How to Guide for Participating in Socio-economic Impact Assessments" to encourage women to participate in resource development assessments. Women rarely benefit from resource development projects and may even be negatively impacted, according to the guide. The resource provides strategies on how gather information about the proposed project, talk to others within the community about its impact, and voice your opinion at a public assessment.

These projects share the common thread of increasing women's knowledge of systems and providing strategies to unlock these systems in order that women may participate more fully in the economic development of their community and increase their own financial self-sufficiency.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, Resources_and_Research