Shelter Centre
Women Economic Development Programme

Training for marginalized women groups for acquiring professional skills
 

The Shelter Centre has been doing practical work with women and children-victims of violence since 2001. Recently, they have come to the conclusion that the economic dependence on the partner is one of the commonest reasons that bind the women in the homes where they suffer abuse. The bad economy and the high rate of poverty in our country, that is, the incapability to provide existence for their children and themselves, the ignorant attitude by the country and the non-existence of supporting programmes, are the main reasons why these women are controlled, manipulated and forced to stay in such violent relations.

"An important part of the Shelter Centre programme is the statistics regarding the target group, which processes data that present a clear picture of the number of victims, their age, nationality, education, kinds of violence, problems and other parameters. According to them, in the period between 2001-2003, out of the total number of people who had been taken care of in Centres, 23% were with elementary education, 55 with high-school education, 14% with university education and 8% of the women lacked any formal education. As far as the solutions to problems are concerned, the toughest situation was faced with the women who had no education, since their economic status was also threatened. The average age of the sheltered women is between 30-40 years of age, and their ambition for additional education was goes down to the minimum. The real possibilities for their employment are for example, cleaning houses, offices, doing the laundry or ironing. The survey done at the centre, provided results according to which women have both desire and ambition to be educated and trained for certain skills, such as sewing, cosmetics, hairdressing. Those are skills that can be acquired relatively fast, and the women have a real possibility to use them in search for employment" - says Daniela Dabeska from the Shelter Centre.

The results form these surveys are the main motive for creating the Women Economic Development Programme - training for working with sewing machines in the textile industry, that will also be an answer to the essential needs and problems. The realization of the Programme started in September 2003, and it is planned to terminate in 2005. Its realization is supported by the town Nurnberg, the German Embassy in Macedonia, the Humanitarian Help Unit at the Swiss Embassy, MEDF and FOSIM.  The project consists of: a cycle of trainings for the marginalized women groups, that is for the women-victims of violence, and the beneficiaries of the project can also be women with low social status, the single mothers and women from the rural areas. Its basic goal is to offer conditions for providing training courses for the target group, through which women can acquire professional skills and make themselves competitive on the labour market.

 

D.M.