WHY SIMMA WOMEN RESOURCE CENTER Simma: Satangs Institute for Management, Marketing and Advocacy. Problems related to advancement of women in society are vast and too difficult to be summoned by people themselves. It must be accepted that women and their children are the vulnerable segment of our society yet to they are denied of their rights. Women welfare work very hard with limited decision making powers and inferior social status in communities where they live. Girls has limited access to education and lack required skills for employment and end up being married and often becomes dependants and servants of any household. Other factors affecting women includes: • Poverty • Illiteracy • Lack of required skills • Domestic violence • Negative social concepts and belief To address above problems SIMMA stands for !. Equality: Remove all forms of barriers which against particular groups of people, women, ethnic minority. 2.Development Train and educate to enable disadvantages groups to develop their potential more fully 3.Empowerment create awareness, encourage decision making power at all levels in all forms, provide new opportunity and greater control over resource SIMMA VOCATIONAL TRAINING INSTITUTE & WOMEN RESOURCE CENTER BACKGROUND SIMMA, which Acronym stands for Santang’s Institute for Management, Marketing & Advocacy, is a self help non profit making charitable organization found by late Madame SATANG JOBARTEH who at this point of our development felt the need for such association to devote itself to the welfare of women and redress some if not all the obstacles hindering their progress in development. Simma was setup and registered as charity in September 1996. The organization seeks to improve the economic and social prospects of women by providing them with skills and the capacity to increase their awareness and financial independence through income earning opportunity, training for self employment and eventual non-reliance on men of their society Target Groups Girls, young women and the children with specific focus on School dropouts Illiterate girls and young women Handicapped people Socio-economic groups and age grade association AIM To train, educate and counsel for Gender awareness and equality Self reliance and contribution towards Development and Sustainable nation building OBJECTIVES: To create opportunities for advancement of girls and women To improve the social and economic status of our target groups To increase number of literate women and decrease illiterate rate To encourage self employment entrepreneurship and reduce dependency on white color jobs To increase awareness about negative practice affecting women and children To reduce unemployment and idleness To contribute to the national development of The Gambia With the advent of modern technologies, women are now interested in different information Technology and apart from typewriting women are now on the lead in being computer literate to be more efficient and productive. Simma therefore, caters for the ever growing technological world so that the women of the Gambia are not left behind Nowadays many women wants to be engaged in accountancy as professional in order to be more empowered and to promote gender balance. Simma Vocational Training & Women Resource Centre Trains young women on the subject to prepared for the task ahead This picture shows how Simma Vocational Training Institute prepared and trained young women of our society with less academic background to be qualified seamstress in order to be self employed and independent. Various skills acquirements are achieved from these training Since the women are seeking for greater empowerment. Local women of our society are sensitized and counseled on gender equality and to gain more political awareness and seek for more rights and privileges. Personal empowerment session is being held weekly by the institute Women cannot be fully empowered without fully representation in the national assembly. This has prompt Simma to pull its strength to support and campaign for more female Member of Parliament representation. Women contributes to our Socio economic development to our society. As in The Gambia women produce almost half of what is consumed by the populace, SIMMA poised to help these vulnerable groups to be fully economic vibrant. These pictures indicates women doing tie & dye and rice farming for survival and income generations. SUMMARY OF SIMMA VOCATIONAL TRAINING INSTITUTE & WOMEN RESOURCE CENTRE ORGANISATIONAL BACKGROUND SIMMA Vocational Training Institute was established February 1991 by Late Ms Satang Jobarteh in response to the need for vocational training. To emerge in support of government’s effort to make education accessible to all and equip youths with vocational qualifications for the labor market. SIMMA operations are in line with the education policy of The Gambia. Our emphasis is on access, quality and relevance with specific focus on the girl child and women of all status. About 98% of our students are female who frequently have the least advantage in our society with little or no education and few marketable skills. Simma operate in five thematic areas: 1. Educational and skills training 2. Sensitisation and awareness raising on social issues like: family/marriage (early /arranged marriage, violation against women, HIV/Aids and other health related issues) political sensitisation, all kind of gender issues etc 3. Advocacy and counselling 4. Publication and documentation and 5. Capacity building for women in national development, socio-economic activities, gender equality through genuine partnership etc To enable (SIMMA) match with her new strategic direction effectively; all SIMMA programs (vocational training and women advocacy and counselling unit) now operates under SIMMA Women’s Resource Centre. SIMMA Vocational Training and Women’s Resources Centre is located at Bundung, Kombo St. Mary Division shares a fence with the Bundung Magistrate Court on its eastern site, the Police Station on the South and Charles Jow Middle School on its western site with a total square metre of 9000sqm2. MISSION To create facilities for further learning and skill development and fight for the right, equity, with equal participation for the marginalized girls and young women in our communities and environs through empowerment (skill) training developing, advocacy and counselling and other supports in order to discover themselves. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE ORGANISATION INCLUDE: 1. To counsel young inexperienced school dropouts, deprived members of our society to enable them overcome difficulties and cope with their social problems 2. To help rehabilitate and replace young women into established institutions of learning and training centres to facilitate the completion of their learning 3. To raise awareness of their cultural background and current social, economic and development issues 4. To identify critical areas of concern affecting the advancement of women in society and develop approaches/strategies to address them. 5. To provide a forum for girls and young women from different, background to meet and discuss, share their problems and learn beneficial skills. 6. To create awareness of the existence of marginalization of women in our society so as to empower women’s participation in decision making at all levels 7. To mobilise the public from grass root to appreciate the role of women in society. 8. To promote and further development the knowledge and performance of women in all spheres of development. 9. to ensure those activities of this organisation spread from urban to growth centres Presently, the courses we offered and the subjects involved are • SECRETARIAL = General computing, Data base, Excel, word processing, English, Bookkeeping &Accounts, business studies &communication, Office procedures, Typewriting, personal empowerment • PRE-VOCATIONAL= English, Bookkeeping &Accounts, entrepreneurship, Arithmetic, Sewing, Tie &Dye and Batik COMMUNITY PROJECTS Our solidarity for gender groupings has taken a high toll in 2005. There were lots of sensitisation and educational workshops with our local affiliated groups ranging from HIV/AIDS awareness campaign and students weekly gender empowerment lessons in both SIMMA and other skills centre. Presently SIMMA has approved affiliation with eight local women’s group that is seeking support on economic empowerment on different income generation. Quelling this problem, we had to develop project proposals on co-operative ventures for each society suitable for your environment and asked for donor support. Many women groups are now realising our work and are seeking for affiliation with us to incorporate them into our program activities for any possible supports, but at the moment we are incapacitate to address for immediate solutions. Through donor assistance, we will successfully engaged them on meaningful projects. Sincerely these women groups had different ambitions for developments and are mostly engaged in soap/OMO making which is less effective if to gain economic empowerment. Through consultations and meetings with these groups, we found out that they can be more variably engage on different co-operative and producer co-operative and within few years all the members can be economical empowered and at the same time be much beneficial to the communities they are situated. We hope any donor assistance on these activities will fulfil the hopes and desire of our poor needy affiliated groups. WORKSHOPS/SEMINARS SIMMA continues to strengthen its operatives through staff benefiting from attending seminars and workshops locally and internationally. These workshops/seminars served us to acquire additional knowledge to apply to our working related activities. Among the seminars and workshops attended were organised by The Association of Non Governmental Organisation (TANGO), United Nation (UN), National Aids Secretariat (NAS), Education for All (EFA), Actionaid the Gambia (AATG), African Women Development Fund (AWDF), BAD/OCS of Dakar on anti-corruption workshop. At the same vain we organised workshop and other activities portrayed on our brochure with our local affiliated groups periodically. All gearing towards different millennium development goals and to envisage democracy as a pillar. Each year Simma held with her women groups across the country such as environmental workshops, women’s week celebration, 16days of activism against gender base violence. These are mostly cerebrated or commemorated every year in the Gambia with cross-cutting of women fraternity. Among these groups are past students of the institute who form large part of the group within their localities with community elders. During this time, protocols are forwarded for any possible changes of law that will provide more equity and equally between men and women. Though it is strongly debated in the national assembly which comprised of fewer women representatives and at most cases these laws are thrown out. Simma being part of these advocacy once made it possible in succeeding through campaigning to help and made two women contestants out of five who shown interest in politics to secure representation. LikeLike ·
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 06:14:11 +0000
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