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Empowering Women and Community Organizing—Developing skills for community activism

Basic Community Organizing
Women attend frequent group meetings that are held according to the needs of the participants. The groups give women a safe place to meet and have a dialogue examining accepted social norms for women. The meetings also allow women to build their confidence and self-esteem while promoting critical thinking about subjects related to family and social status. For many women, this is the only framework that provides an opportunity to take part in discussion about themselves. Additionally, facilitators of these groups combine their professional experience and the women’s personal knowledge with objective outside information such as legal and civic knowledge and budgeting skills. The participants gain knowledge and tools to advance their status and rights, while discussing the importance of having a pro-active attitude towards their lives and their need for legal and economic rights.

Advanced Community Organizing
Kayan also provides support and guidance to groups of women who choose to become community activists. Some of the women who participate in the above mentioned program choose to continue the meetings in order to reach an advanced stage of capacity building activism in the community. The participants learn to create social networks using a method for community organizing that is based on leaders receiving training for community work and eventually going back to their communities and transferring the knowledge and abilities that they have accumulated to others. Some projects work with groups who are already focused on a specific cause, need or issue, while others work to establish a consensus among the women and to define a specific program or community activity. In all instances the group discusses empowerment, advancing their goals of development and meeting the needs and demands of participants. Most of the current projects that Kayan activists are working on are outcomes of these activities.