The National Centre for Women Development, NCWD, is working with the Partnership for Advancing Women in Economic Development, PAWED and the development Research and Projects Centre dRPC, to build women’s skills.
The NCWD said this would connect the needs of women in the rural areas of the country to government policies.
The Director General of the NCWD, Dr Asabe Bashir said these in Abuja at a three-day training of the trainers and curriculum development workshop on Advocacy and Communication for Women’s Economic Empowerment.
Dr. Bashir said; ” the NCWD is interested in addressing the strategic elements and critical factors which impact upon and affects women.”
According to her, the Centre is working in support of Nigeria gender agenda, and the training indicates the strengthening of partnership with the DPRC.
She said; “Our partnership within the dRPC is to enhance and support women and girls towards the actualisation of total wellbeing improvement and realisation of their full dreams. We believe the training will further enhance programming and trainings and our capacity to advocate effectively for the advancement of women.”
The Director of Projects, Development Research and Projects Centre, Dr Stanley Ukpai said that Nigeria been on the path of economic development is engaging the National Centre for Women Development to implement most of its recovery policies which are targeted at women’s economic empowerment.
Dr Ukpai said; “The national center for women development is already an agency that is attached to the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and the ministry conduct routine training for women on life skills economic empowerment skills.
“Considering the curriculum we sought to approach the national centre for women’s development to integrate a component that helps build the skills in advocacy and communication. It’s often difficult to translate needs of women who are in the rural areas of Nigeria to government so sometimes even though the policies have the right intentions, they don’t often reflect the felt need of those women.”
Dr Ukpai stated ”the dRPC is partnering with the objective of building capacity of women to translate their needs to appropriate agencies.
“So Nigeria is putting processes that will ensure women economic empowerment and economic development.”
The President of the Association of Women in Trade and Agriculture, Dr Ruth Agbo , called for full economic engagement and participation of women in all sectors of the economy.
Dr Agbo said; “We need total woman engagement, we need total woman commitment and we need to be ready and available to carry out the economic activities of this country and that is why AWITA is passionate about women economic empowerment programmes for women.
“So we see this training as a very big opportunity and another landslide achievement where woman are going to be empowered more in the area of training because there is nothing for women without the empowerment, we are also believing in the situation where more of our policies will be implemented and the only way we can do that is through the language of advocacy.
“We want a situation where women can be positioned, especially now that Nigeria is looking into non-oil programmes. So women are the great drivers of the economy even though informal sector but they also stand the position to be equipped for this great agenda,” Dr Agbo added.
At the end of the three-day workshop the participants are expected to come up with framework that would be sustained by the national center for Women’s development, to continue the process of interpreting women’s challenges.
The framework is also expected to address the factors hindering women’s empowerment through unfolding government policies.
Mercy Chukwudiebere
