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Women pillar alliance carries out civic education targeting women


Date: 08-11-2022


Women pillar alliance(WOPA) is a women-led organization that aims at achieving community health and development through community empowerment through women involvement. Led by Violate Ombaka, who is the director, WOPA advocates for social justice and is very passionate about serving marginalized people in communities, especially women and girls, and helping them alleviate extreme human suffering, especially within the areas targeted by Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
On 8th October 2022, partnering with Uraia, WOPA director Violate Ombaka joined other Women Leaders in Mumias West Sub County for capacity building on governance.
When we talk about governance, we refer to structures, processes and systems that define decision-making and interactions among various stakeholders. It the exercise of functions and power through a country’s social political and economic institutions. The same concept not only applies to government but also different organizations as they relate to other stakeholders. Capacity building is the process used to improve or acquire certain skills, knowledge, processes or systems in sufficient quantity to meet its core functions. Governance can impact how decisions are made and implemented. That is why WOPA takes keen interest in empowering its members as often as possible so that they can always be aware of how, who, and where to start from whenever they have issues pertaining to their objectives not being met by the government.
In collaboration with Uraia, they held training on governance so that they could learn more on leadership systems. This was aimed at gaining more tactics on how to present the interests of women and the girl child in government forums. Through governance training, the risk of exclusion and discrimination of the social groups they represent (women and girls) can be better defended with protective safeguarding measures developed and enforced. Such training raises awareness of their rights to participate and the fact that they should be part of the decision making and the planning processes. They therefore benefit from improved inclusiveness in government activities. They also learn how they can do social audits of government projects and hold them accountable in areas where they have failed or just neglected.
WOPA has a project on menstrual hygiene and it’s hoping that through their activism, the government will understand the need to include sanitary towels within its budget as it remains one of the key things affecting girl child education.
A structured approach to capacity building allows more effective involvement/participation in the government activities. Improved governance, stressing on capacity building, empowers citizens and promotes accountability and a shared sense of responsibility on the part of the government, provided there is constant application of the strategy over time and a pledge to cultural change instead of one-off interventions.