Education

Quite quickly it became obvious that cross border participation and protestant engagement was not what it should be. Talking to individual women and women’s groups it was ascertained that this was due to a number of factors that are as follows:

• Fear of participation on a cross border basis or the other community
• Transport
• Desire to have localised services

So then, how did the SLWC begin to address these issues?

Firstly a satellite network of outreach centres was established whereby the following organisations agreed to recruit women to participate on courses to be delivered locally.

• Manorcunningham Development Association
• St Johnston / Carrigans Resource Centre
• Raphoe Family Resource Centre
• Garvetagh Women’s Group
• Sawel Women’s Group
• Strabane & District Women’s Together

This remedied two of their major concerns. To address the 3rd and last concern it was determined that work needed to be done with the women in their local communities and support and information needed to be accessible at that point of contact and nowhere else at that time. To this end the SLWC decided to establish a Strabane & District Women’s Network in 2007.

To date the level of participation has been increased to 70% from the Strabane District and 30% from the south of Ireland.  It is appreciated that there is a long way to go but working in partnership with other community providers will secure cross border and cross community participation and that the centre goes back to the ownership of the women as it should be.