Women to Explore Strategies to Eradicate Poverty

from All Africa

BuaNews (Tshwane)

By Bathandwa Mbola
Pretoria

South African women are to exchange poverty eradication strategies and explore new and effective solutions to place women at the centre of action against poverty in the country.

Hosted by the South African Women in Dialogue (SAWID) set to start next Monday, the four day conference, aimed at eradicating poverty, will be attended by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka.

Under the theme: "From Dialogue to Development: Women Uniting to Eradicate Poverty" the conference will be a direct response to the 2003 and 2005 SAWID Programmes of Action.

"(The conference) will bring together women development practitioners, researchers and academics, women in civil society and the private sector, women working in communities, faith-based organisations and youth structures," SAWID said in a statement, Thursday.

"It is expected that at least 60 percent of the participants will be women from peri-urban and rural communities who are mostly unemployed or self-employed, but actively involved in programmes to improve the lives of people."

In September 2006, SAWID Patron, Zanele Mbeki and a delegation of 15 visited Chile and Tunisia as part of a study on the poverty eradication strategies of these two countries who have managed to fulfil the first Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty long before 2015.

Since then SAWID has resolved to design its own poverty eradication strategy aimed at:

* targeting poorest families and marginalised communities with a basket of services and sundry infrastructure;

* creating state-supported delivery mechanisms in addition to departmental line functions;

* partnering with non-governmental service-providers;

* creating a special fund to support infrastructure linkage of poor communities to mainstream municipalities using government, private sector and citizen financial contributions; and

* mobilising civil society towards social cohesion and national unity against poverty.

According to SAWID this will be achieved through its "Development Caravan" program which provides and supports identified communities.

"This non-governmental poverty eradication programme will target indigent families in select nodal areas with a basket of services and physical infrastructure in partnership with government (their municipalities), private sector and training and research institutions."

SAWID is an independent women's platform committed to hearing the voice of every woman and to improving the status of women by engaging national government, the private sector, civil society including non-governmental organisations, community-based organizations, faith-based organisations and donors, in a partnership to shape community, provincial and continental agendas.