Women Council officials attend forum in Manila
By Lyna Mohammad

A group photo of the participants at one of the visits. Photo: Hjh Samsiah Hj Abd Latif

Two members of the Brunei's Women Council were recently invited to the Regional Exchange Programme by the Asian Women in Cooperative Forum (AWCF), based in Manila, a programme on the empowerment of women and entrepreneurship development.

Representing the Women Council for the first time were its Secretary, Hjh Samsiah Hj Abd Latif and Mariya Eya, a committee member. The exchange programme was participated by delegates from the 10 Asean countries, representing cooperatives, government organisations and non-government organisations. Travelling to various places in the Philippines, the participants were exposed to the different Filipino cultures from north to south, got to know the programmes and services of cooperative organisations and interacted with co-op leaders and entrepreneurs.

The objective of the programme was to enhance the capacities and skills of women cooperative leaders on micro-small-medium enterprise and financial services management through exposure programme activities to successful cooperatives and institutions, with the end view that the women leaders will integrate applications approaches and strategies in their respective cooperatives to economically empower their members.

It also aims to bring the leaders together to network, share and learn possible improvement and replication of best practices and strategies on enterprise development and management and financial/ lending services operation and management. Another aim was to advocate to cooperatives to strategically plan how to use their resources to provide mechanisms and support services needed specifically by women to sustain their economic endeavours and to produce and publish documentation of models and best practices in micro-small-medium-enterprises and financial/lending services of co-operatives and individual entrepreneurs.

Lastly, it aims to prepare well-documented reports which give accounts of the lessons learned from the programme for a broader dissemination of information to reach the co-operative sector and other institutions.

Among the presentation made at the forum were a presentation on Cooperative and Entrepreneurial Development, Role of an NGO to Support the Entrepreneurial Development Programmes and Economic Empowerment through Cooperatives, Small Medium Enterprises.

Other activities conducted were lectures, panel discussions, visits and a review of the nine days of activities of the exchange programme.

Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin