The Aurat Foundation, Peshawar has started training the women candidates and their campaign staff for the Local Government by-elections, scheduled for March 28, 2004.
One such training-cum-motivation meeting was held in Chakdara on Tuesday at the central office of the Pakistan Youth Welfare Organisation.
A total of 50 people, drawn from different walks of life, including doctors, lawyers, civil society organisations and women candidates and their would-be polling agents turned up at the training conducted by the Aurat Foundation master trainers Ms Uzma Mehboob and Ms Noor Marjan.
Ms Uzma Mehboob introduced the Aurat Foundation, saying the Foundation was a national-level NGO working for the empowerment of women for the last 18 years.
She said to achieve the goal, the organisation was running 10 different projects. A brief description of various projects and their target audience was also given.
Another master trainer Ms Noor Marjan gave background to the campaign launched by the Foundation to motivate women to take part in the electoral exercise by casting ballots and contesting the upcoming by-elections in the district.
She reminded the audience that when the date for the Local Government elections was set in year 2001 and 33 seats were reserved for women in various tiers of the Local Government, the Aurat Foundation had launched an extensive campaign-Citizens Campaign for Women Representation (CCWR)-to encourage women to become a part of the system.
Ms Noor Marjan said that the drive was run in 100 districts of the country, including 24 districts of the NWFP. As part of the campaign, she added, women were motivated to take part in the electoral exercise and as many as 36,000 of them became local government representatives. Afterwards, the Foundation started a series of training for the elected women which was proving helpful in making their representation effective.
Of the by-polls campaign, Ms Uzma Mehboob said that there were 1953 vacant seats for the women in different union councils of the province. To get these seats filled, the Aurat Foundation had launched a campaign, adding the meeting in Chakdara was part of that wider drive.
She asked all those present to motivate women to take part in the by-polls and make their presence felt in the local councils.
The sessions were followed by a thorough discussion wherein the participants put up different questions and the Aurat Foundation team answered them.
Another round of training will be held today (Wednesday).
Meanwhile, one such training programme was conducted in Mardan at the Foundation's Resource Centre. The women candidates from six union councils and their election campaign staff benefited from the exercise.