I'm looking forward to the opening of the Working Women's Centre Timor-Leste. It's a not-for-profit community organisation that supports women employees or women who wish to work. It's aiming to increase women's participation in and contribution to workplace arrangements that improve their income and conditions, by:
• Providing information, advice and support to women on work issues
• Initiating and implementing training programs on women’s work issues
• Responding to specific issues in the workplace
• Developing resources on issues facing women in or entering the workforce
• Working with unions in their efforts to gain true equality for women members
• Encouraging women to take an active part in their union
• Actively promoting equal employment opportunity for women through policy development, committees and campaigns
• Building good relationships with other non-governmental organisations, with government and labor organisations domestically and internationally.
The Working Women's Centre Timor-Leste will initiate and implement Education, support and advocacy for vulnerable women workers in Timor-Leste, providing women working as domestic workers with education, advocacy and support to enable them to access their rights.
The project is a first stage pilot and will focus on domestic workers in Dili,
The new centre will be launched officially during a conference to be held in Dili on September 1st and 2nd, 2011, "Our Work, Our Lives", which will cover a range of topics relevant to women's issues in the workplace.
Like many women all over the world, the women of Timor-Leste often carry heavy burdens, juggling family with work outside the home. In a developing country, the chores are sometimes much more onerous as they struggle with insufficient water and electricity supply at home, dealing with family health issues, trying to feed many mouths on a very tight budget and getting themselves to work when public transport is scarce and often unaffordable.
I'm all for anything that helps Timorese women to cope.
