about
us
who
we arewho we are
CAWN is run by a management committee that provides technical advice with their expertise. All members of the committee are gender specialist and offer their services to CAWN on a voluntary basis. The committee is comprised of seven women who mainly work in the international voluntary sector, they are gender experts, academics, ex workers from the textile industry and labour rights activists. The ethnic background of the Committee is varied in age and nationalities, comprising women from Mexico, Honduras, Greece, Australia, Scotland and England.
company secretary: Debbie Mace
co-directors: Marilyn Thomson (Chair), Mandy Macdonald, Amy North, Angela Hadjipateras, Pamela Reyes Zaballa, Yessica Alvarez Manzano, and Samira Yussuf.
staff
programme and advocacy coordinator: Katherine Ronderos
research and fundraising assistant: Virginia Lopez-Calvo
finance officer: Debbie Mace
staff manager: Marilyn Thomson
interns: Jennifer Browne & Emily Gilloran
We also depend on volunteers to support our day to day work and for the overall management of the organisation.
partners
Centro de Estudios de la
Mujer - Honduras (CEMH)
CEMH was founded in 1986 and obtained its legal status no. 209-87 on the 6 August 1987, as a civil not for profit organisation without political or religious ties. The organisation’s mission is to contribute to the elimination of different forms of discrimination and violence against women, promote and contribute to the transformation of the economic, social and cultural structure of the country in order to procure a more inclusive society, without poverty, with social justice and gender equality, and enable full citizenship and the human rights of women.
CAWN started an exciting project in September 2006 with
CEMH:
Challenging violence against women in Honduras: identifying the links
between poverty reduction and promoting women’s rights
The project supports young and adult women in poor and marginalised communities in Honduras affected by violence by providing them with resources and tools and by offering emotional and legal support in order to overcome gender-based violence. In order to support the empowerment of women to tackle gender-based violence CEM-H will set up self help groups to access services, and provide training on reproductive rights, HIV/AIDS, self-esteem and practical income generation skills.
The project is training community leaders to contribute to the prevention of violence and to support cases of domestic violence and other forms of gender violence and also to work on promoting equitable gender relations in their communities. CEM-H works on preventing violence against women and girls through workshops with the wider community and with the perpetrators of violence, working with young and adult men on the construction of a new masculinity.
Through research and advocacy the legal framework and justice system in Honduras will be able to address gender-based violence, to increase social awareness of violence in the community and to strengthen the security and human rights of women. CEMH is also involved in research that investigates the rise in hate crimes and violence against women in Honduras and other Central American countries. All the research findings and experiences of violence against women in the region are being shared across the globe through different advocacy activities that target public policies, nationally and internationally.
During the course of the project CAWN will invite members
of CEM-H to visit the UK and Europe, to speak at seminars to share experiences
and findings of the research done in Honduras and the UK with women’s
organisations, NGOs, academics and policy makers.
Movimiento de Mujeres Trabajadoras
y Desempleadas ‘Maria Elena Cuadra’ (MEC)
MEC has worked since 1993 with women workers in many different sectors (workers in the garments-for-export processing industry, domestic workers, tobacco workers, miners, informal-sector workers, small/micro businesswomen, women without paid employment), raising awareness of their rights and carrying out advocacy and campaigning work. It has a membership of approx. 30,000 women workers from these sectors.
Since 2005 CAWN has supported MEC’s economic literacy campaing through the project: Promoting civil and economic rights of Nicaraguan women (2005 – 2008).
The project focuses on economic literacy and aims to use this to strengthen the capacity of poor women in Nicaragua to influence and participate actively in the formulation of gender-sensitive economic policies at the local, national and regional levels.
The project aims to enhance the economic and social status of women and contribute to transforming political and public culture by raising awareness of women’s demands for economic and trade policies that promote gender equity. These are achieved by raising women’s own awareness of their rights as enshrined in the Nicaraguan Constitution and international conventions and agreements (such as, CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action, the Millennium Development Goals and relevant International Labour Organisation Conventions) and providing them with the tools to analyse how these rights will be affected by government trade and investment plans, such as the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the forthcoming phasing out of the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA). Both these plans have been developed without the meaningful participation of women and are likely to lead to increased poverty and a further deterioration in the position and condition of women.
MEC, CAWN’s local partner, will play a key role by providing training in economic literacy, leadership and advocacy for the primary stakeholders in order to enhance their capacity to participate effectively in policy processes at the local, national and regional levels, aimed at defending their economic interests. Policy proposals formulated and presented by MEC will be informed by the results of broad-based consultations and monitoring of the impact of economic and trade policies on poor women in the project intervention areas.
