‘Empowering Urban Women’

The project, titled, Empowering Urban Women is a series of seminars with the women of East Port-of-Spain in mind.

Permanand hosted six of the seminars over a period of several months last year. They featured speakers from organisations such as the Ministry of Labour, Eastern Credit Union and First Citizens bank who guided attendees on how to apply for loans and start their own businesses.

“I had a lady start a lucrative business, doing embroidery, in her bedroom. She bought the machinery. She has no overhead, she’s at home with her family and she is making money,” said Permanand.

“It also helps develop self-esteem, knowing you can look out for yourself. In one of the sessions we had up in John John, it broke my heart when one of the participants came up to me and said she never felt as though she could achieve anything. I have been fortunate to be able to dream. So many of these women can’t”

“I designed it with helping these women achieve in mind. Because something happened in their lives that stopped it. I don’t know what and whatever it is, isn’t important. I want them to start again. It is almost like a second start, a second chance.”

Permanand says she has been reworking the project with a view to sending it on to the Prime Minister in light of the recent upsurge of violence against women.

“I actually see the project as something of the social component of our crime solution,” said Permanand.

“If we get our women empowered, if we get them to achieve their potential. They will become the role models in their own homes. Their children will now look up to their mother. She will now have the power to send them to school, to listen to them, to talk to them, to be with them.”

Permanand said the genesis for the idea came from a UN conference she attended last year on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. She has also lived in and around Port of Spain for most of her life and said her mother grew up in Laventille. This is why she has such an affinity for the communities of East Port of Spain.

She intends to go through with another round of seminars this year, but said that funding remains problematic.

She expects that the first should take place after March.