WILDAF-TOGO organized from 12th to 14th April 2010, a training session for its new members under the theme: "organizational development and networking." The training aimed to strengthen the capacity of its new members in order to enable them to be more effective in their fieldwork.

Thirty participants from different associations have been edified on various themes such as development and organizational strengthening, project cycle and organization management.

At the end of the evaluation of the workshop, participants recognized the relevance of all topics.

Let us point out that this workshop was made possible thanks to the financial support of the World Bank.

Rural women paralegals who started their work a year ago in Togo, have been attending since yesterday 19th April a consolidation workshop in Kara, a town located 400 km from Lome, the capital. The five-day workshop will end on 23rd April. It will take place in two stages with 25 participants per session. The second session is expected from 3rd to 7th May 2010.

The objective of this workshop is to reinforce the rural women paralegals’ technical skills and knowledge in the field regarding women’s fundamental human rights areas in which shortcomings have been noticed by social workers who supervise and help them and the sub regional office during its monitoring visits. The workshop will also be an opportunity to evaluate and reinforce the current strategies for women access to land and the participation in decision making in order to ensure that the project’s results are in the right track.

Let us recall that these paralegals have been trained in the framework of the project "Using law for rural women’s empowerment in West Africa" and are mandated to popularise the law in their respective communities and to assist other women individually and the community by using law to resolve the difficulties they face at all levels in their daily activities. This project is under implementation in four (4) other countries including Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo.

Therefore the same workshop will be conducted simultaneously in these four countries starting from next week and will target problems identified in each country.

WiLDAF-West Africa has started since March 22nd a series of monitoring/evaluation mission of its new project " Using law for rural women’s empowerment in West Africa ."

This project, which started over a year ago, is part of the third objective of the MDGs (gender equality and women’s empowerment) and aims to enable rural women to know their rights, to claim them and enjoy them in order to exercise them on the same footing as men in their family, community and professional lives.

To date, 250 women paralegals, members of farmers’ organizations of the five beneficiary countries were trained. They are responsible for disclosing the law in their respective communities and to assist other women individually and the community in using the law to resolve difficulties they face at all levels in their daily activities. They are provided with training manuals and other tools designed for this purpose (Click on the following link to access these tools: # http://www.wildaf-ao.org/fr/spip.ph... art1805).

Nearly Twenty community committees to combat violence against women were also established per country. These committees have the duty to raise awareness about this scourge so common in urban than rural areas. They are designed to receive complaints from victims and help them find solutions to their problems through support by the members of the community of these committees.

The monitoring/evaluation mission covers the five beneficiary countries of the project namely: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo. The mission will focus on the activities already implemented in the field. It will also be an opportunity to evaluate the work of the rural women paralegals and the members of the community committees to combat violence against women, to draw lessons in order to continue the project.