Women’s Rooms Union Hold AGM
Women’s Rooms manager members from nineteen municipalities in eight regions of Georgia attended The Women’s Rooms Union[1], Annual General Meeting from the12th to the14th of December in Tskaltubo. The meeting provided an overview of two years’ work and training sessions on communication, fundraising, inclusive working principles, data collection and knowledge management.
The meeting was also the springboard for two consultants working on the organizational development of the Union. With their help, the Union has already developed a more effective team focused on strengthening and scaling up the Women’s Rooms service in the whole country as well as successfully applying for donor funding to implement GEDSI related projects for which they are ideally placed.
‘During the last two years the union has been advocating and promoting the municipal Women’s Rooms at National and local government levels. Several meetings were held with the Gender Equality committees of the Parliament of Georgia and the Supreme Council of Ajara. Recommendations for local self-governments were sent from the Parliament to support the Women’s Rooms. The union has successfully implemented small grant projects with the partnership of the Women’s Fund in Georgia and HEKSEFER Georgia, and established women non-formal discussion and advocacy groups in Ajara and Samtskhe-Javaxeti, Ninotsminda. Recently, the Union has started EU funded project on awareness raising on violence against women where sixteen municipal Women’s Rooms are involved,’ – Fatima Bolkvadze, the Union executive director said.
‘The meeting was very necessary for all of us to share each other’s success and challenges. The versatile work the Women’s Rooms managers do is not properly recognized and appreciated by the municipalities and the union intends to support the managers to improve their reporting and data collection skills and visualize their results for wider audiences,’ – Nelly Abechkhrishvili, Telavi Women’s Room manager.
‘We believe in women power and economic equality. Five Women’s Rooms in Ajara municipalities established municipal small grants programmes and supported about fifty women to start business. The model will be promoted through the Women’s Rooms Union network which is oriented to support rural women’s access to funds for their start-ups,’ – the managers from Ajara region said.
The organizational development of the WRU is facilitated by the Mercy Corps Georgia implemented ALCP2 programme, which is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in cooperation with the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC) and Sweden.
[1] Created through the initiative of municipal Women’s Rooms managers in October 2021 as national representative body.