Woman empowerment

Because women in Somalia are seen only as house-keepers, less engaged and as such made less productive at all levels in their societies, HIRDA provides practical support to especially Somali women who are faced with relentless emotional and financial denials as well as those who are subjected to anti-social authorities.

Our aim is to create a better future for women by building their capacities which will enable them achieve self-determination and self-reliance which will contribute to Sustainable development. To achieve this, HIRDA has made the creation of awareness on girl child education and enrolment among families and mothers a priority. We also encourage women of different age groups to follow HIRDA training programmes since these programmes aims to empower women, economically and socially.
We recognize that poverty can have a strong impact on women (as well as men) and the key to reduce the several forms of poverty that women faces which is mostly linked to the unequal access to education, production resources, control of assets and in some cases unequal rights in the family is by empowering them. We believe that by empowering women and increasingly acknowledging the rights of women to education and recognizing women’s role in the society we can contribute to the reduction of poverty among women.

HIRDA has established two women empowerment centers in Bardere and Abud-wak to facilitate women groups to organize their activities, holding meetings and trainings, exchange ideas. Through these centres they also get to meet other women, share experiences and support each other.
Due to the change in societal behavior in Somalia, HIRDA,s initiatives on women capacity building were able to assist young girls and women to gain knowledge and skills to improve their standard of living and protect themselves from HIV and AIDS. The women organisations have been able to train women or girls to have an interest in learning of handcraft since these objects are widely used not only in rural areas but also in urban areas and has a high demand in the markets.

As part of the women empowerment projects,HIRDA also developed a Microcredit allocation initiative to help poor women groups to run petty businesses to improve their livelihoods and the well-being of their families

With the aim of ensuring that recipients bring their girl child to school, this project was able to offer 12 women in 2005 and 24 women in 2006 micro credits. This project contributed a lot to women empowerment, human development and self-reliance in the families directly involved and also helped to generate a broader understanding of how poor families can overcome poverty by their efforts, making use of the existing opportunities. It again helped to improve the livelihoods of participating women and also enabled their children to get access to school and food.
Also with the support of HIRDA, the Women organization centres have been able to provide literacy courses to girls and women, organize city cleaning campaigns in Bardere and Abud-wak, raise funds for girl child education as well as organize international festivals such as may day, world peace day, international women’s day and International Earth day.