Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Memorandum submitted by the Training for Women Network

  The Training for Women Network (TWN) would like to submit the two enclosed research reports In Their Own Words and Women, Civil Society and Peacebuilding as evidence before the above inquiry[3]. They are both the result of extensive research in the areas of the victims sector in Northern Ireland and the role of women in the transition from conflict.

  TWN is a network of women's organisations and individuals in Northern Ireland with a membership spanning all geographical areas and sectors of the region. As a funding body, TWN has extensive experience in the selection, administration, monitoring and evaluation of women's training projects in community settings on both sides of the divide with a focus on peace and reconciliation. Both enclosed reports demonstrate the centrality of women in post-conflict arrangements and activities.


CURRENT SITUATION WITH WSN MEMBER GROUPS

ALL SIX KEY BELFAST WOMEN'S GROUPS

Ballybeen Women's Centre

  Ballybeen Women's Centre offers a variety of services to local women, including three childcare facilities. All of the core posts including Finance, Admin, Management and Childcare are under threat due to the current funding climate. If funding doesn't come on stream in the immediate to short-term future it will be impossible for Ballybeen Women's Centre to continue delivering these services at their current capacity.

Footprints Women's Centre

  Closure may be a reality for Footprints Women's Centre if the current funding crisis is not resolved. Footprints offer many services and facilities to local women; these include education and childcare facilities. For example; Footprints offers the only day-care childcare provision in the Colin Glen area and is the biggest local employer outside of industry. Potentially 35 posts and services that are accessed by hundreds of women each year could be lost.

Falls Women's Centre

  Falls Women's Centre offer a range of services to and for women. Various staff and services are under threat due to the current funding crisis. For example, two Admin workers and three staff in the advice and family support unit have been put onto protective notice. If funding doesn't come on stream in the immediate to short-term future it will be impossible for Falls Women's Centre to continue delivering their services at their current capacity.

Greenway Women's Centre

  By the end of March 2005 Greenway WC could lose much of their core staff team including the education worker, cre"che workers and the finance/admin worker. The Essential Skills education worker is funded until June 2006 and the Voluntary Co-ordinator is supported by the Volunteer Development Agency until March 2006. However, the centre will not be able to sustain its work without the core staff team.

Shankill Women's Centre

  Four staff are currently on protective notices. By the end of 13 June workers could be on protective notices, leaving one core-funded post. There is simply no way to continue with the volume of work unless funding is secured for the posts at, at least their current capacity.

Windsor Women's Centre

  Six of Windsor's core staff (including the Job-share co-ordinators, Finance officer, Administration officer, Cleaner and the Childcare Co-ordinater) have been on protective notice from the end of February. Two posts in the childcare department are funded until June 2005; with a further three posts continuing until September 2005. The advice unit in Windsor has been closed since August 2005 due to a lack of funding. In the eight months of 2004 that the advice unit was operational they dealt with 3,300 clients. Windsor Women's Centre will not be able to continue to meet the needs of their local community, at its current capacity if funding is not available to fully resource this work.

OTHER CENTRES AND WOMEN'S ORGANISATIONS

Atlas Women's Centre, Lisburn

  All funding for staff (with the exception of one project) is under threat. Slippage monies will sustain two workers (admin and Childcare) until June 2005. The Centre Manager has agreed to work voluntarily for two months from the end of March. All other staff posts could be lost by the end of the month. If the centre closes the following services will be lost—The cre"che at Atlas Women's Centre which serves over 30 families a week, with some 100 students places a week attending the courses which range from computing to flower arranging, sign language to first aid.

Women's News (Skills training Bi-monthly and magazine publication)

  Beyond March Women's News have one part-time training post funded until the end of June and part-time tutor hours (not a post, 12 hrs max per week) until December 2005. However, they will be losing one part-time Finance/Administration worker, one part-time editor, one part-time training worker and one full-time Marketing/Fundraising worker—total staff loses of three part and one full time staff member. Obviously this situation is a serious threat to WNs being able to continue to stay open. A drastically reduced training service, with no magazine publication is the best-case scenario at this point in time.

Ardoyne Women's Group

  AWG employs one full time co-ordinator, one part-time cre"che worker and one part-time finance and admin worker. They have not been paid a salary since the end of October 2004. They continue to keep the centre open and some programmes running and are working without pay to enable the group to continue operating in the North Belfast area in the hope that they will hear from their potential funder soon.

Citywide Women's Consortium

  CWC is a consortium of women's community based education providers and user groups. The currently employ two full-time staff. Their funding ends in December 2005.

Women's Tec

  Women's Tec have a variety of funded projects with different end dates on project completion, however, the funding for core staff costs including organisation Director and Finance/Admin staff comes to an end on 31 March 2005. Without the funding for these core posts all of the Wtec projects will also be jeopardised.

Ballymurphy Women's Group

  Various end dates for different staff. The funding for the Co-ordinator's post ends in June 2005. The continuation of all of the work of the organisation will be under threat if core costs and core staff are not funded. A BRO application to secure three posts has been unsuccessful and they are appealing this decision.

GROUPS CLOSING

Belfast Women's Training Services

  BWTS is closing down after 12 years of operation with the loss of four part-time and four full-time staff. This is a major blow to the women's community-based education sector with a loss of 200 training places per year. Since 1993 over 2,000 women have completed training courses and personal development programmes through BWTS.

Women Educating for Transformation (WEFT)

  Dublin & Dundalk with cross-border work.

  The Dublin office closed at the end of January and the Dundalk office will close at the end of April.

CONCLUSION COMMENT

  Much of the funding for women's organisations is coming to an end in the next few months. We are still awaiting the Taskforce report-back on the future funding of the community and voluntary sector almost a year after the consultation ended, and given the delays in the processing of Belfast Regeneration Office (BRO) Neighbourhood Renewal applications and a lack of other funding opportunities—things are looking bleak for many of our member groups. The above information is only a fraction of the groups than are going to be affected by the current funding situation.

  The long term effects of this under-resourcing (or even non-resourcing) of the work of the women's sector will have implications across, and beyond, the community and voluntary sector, reducing locally accessible and high quality services for women and their families in many of the recognised and documented areas of greatest need.


Supplementary Memorandum submitted by the Training for Women Network

WOMEN'S ORGANISATIONS AND THE FUNDING CRISIS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

INTRODUCTION

  It has been generally acknowledged that women have sustained communities in Northern Ireland throughout the conflict, carrying out the daily tasks associated with domestic survival regardless of the political situation or conflict-related incidents. Women's organisations have been central to the care and support given to individuals suffering the effects of the conflict. Indeed, studies of victimhood in the conflict have revealed that women far outnumber men in terms of those suffering trauma, those seeking help and those providing care.

  Women's organisations have also been at the forefront of inter-community connections, peacebuilding initiatives and the defusing of conflict within and between communities. This is recognised in international agreements, such as UN Resolution 1325 (2000). In the context of Northern Ireland, women have been and remain at the cutting edge of reconciliation initiatives.

FUNDING CRISES

  The women's sector in Northern Ireland, despite the provision of such essential services, has been chronically underfunded. Where funding has been provided, it has been piecemeal, short term and late, causing many within the sector to seek more stable work elsewhere, creating anxiety for the future and drawing valuable time and resources away from the vital work of the organisations.

  In the case of women's centres in Belfast, the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister granted emergency funding for one year in March 2004, which expires on 31 March 2005. To date, there has been no indication of where continued funding might be drawn from. In addition, the reduction in funding led a number of organisations to look to European funding from the Peace and Reconciliation Programme for the purposes of stability, but also in the acknowledgement that women's groups have so much to offer in the area of peace and reconciliation. Now this fund has been reduced for the Peace II extension and the cutting of measures that benefited women (Measures 1.5—regained through intensive lobbying; 2.5 and 4.1), groups are looking again for funding from the Government that has been discontinued.

THE STATE OF FUNDING FOR WOMEN'S GROUPS, MARCH 2005

  The following is a brief summary of the state of funding for some groups in the women's sector who have responded for the purposes of this submission:

    —  Belfast Women's Training Services—closed 31 March due to lack of funding.

    —  Ballybeen Women's Centre—all posts and services under immediate threat.

    —  Footprints Women's Centre—35 posts and all services under threat.

    —  Falls Women's Centre—two admin workers and three staff on protective notice, current capacity threatened without funding in the short term.

    —  Greenway Women's Centre—much of core staffing will go by the end of March, without which work cannot be sustained, two other workers funded to March and June 2006.

    —  Shankill Women's Centre—four staff on protective notices, nine more by the end of June 2005, leaving one core-funded post.

    —  Windsor Women's Centre—six core staff on protective notice, two more posts funded to June 2005 and three to September 2005, advice centre closed August 2004 (which dealt with 3,300 clients in the eight months it was open), cannot sustain the current capacity.

    —  Atlas Women's Centre—All staff funded to the end of March, except for two posts to June 2005, when the centre may have to close.

    —  Women's News—Part-time training post funded to June and part-time tutor hours to December 2005. Three part-time and one full-time post to be lost in the immediate future with a threat of imminent closure.

    —  Ardoyne Women's Group—All posts unpaid since October 2004.

    —  Citywide Women's Consortium—Funding ends December 2005.

    —  Women's Tec—Some project posts funded to various dates, but core post funding ends 31 March 2005, putting project posts in jeopardy.

    —  Ballymurphy Women's Group—Co-ordinator's post ends June 2005, refused further core funding by the BRO.

    —  Women Educating for Transformation—One office closed January, other office in April, which will end the crucial cross-border work of this organisation.

    —  Rasharkin Women's Group—One project funded to December 2005, all others being lost by the end of April.

    —  Gorbals Women's Group—New cross-community group that is threatened with closure.

    —  Women's Centre, Derry—Reliant on further funding to prevent closure.

    —  Peace II projects, Measure 1.5—half of the 34 women's training projects will be unsustained from mid-2006 and half of the 91 childcare projects from mid-2005.

    —  Peace II projects, Measures 2.5 and 4.1—no further funding beyond 2006, many ending during 2005.

    —  Rural networks—five of the six networks without funding or losing funding by the end of March 2005.

  This list is a small part of the general state of the women's sector in Northern Ireland, comprising only those that have been able to be contacted, could respond and be collated in the short space of time required for submission. If the premise that women's organisations are crucial to the support of victims of the conflict and central to the process of reconciliation (see separate submissions to the Committee, Women, Civil Society and Peacebuilding and In Their Own Words: A Research Report into the Victims Sector), the work of these organisations would need to be expanded in the current political climate, not drastically reduced, as is currently the case.

March 2005





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