Mujeres Unidas de Candelaria

Between Feb­ru­ary 21–24, 2011, Car­rie Glad­stone, direc­tor of new project devel­op­ment in the Office of Advance­ment at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty and who has exten­sive expe­ri­ence work­ing at Deloitte Con­sult­ing on strate­gic plan­ning, pro­gram devel­op­ment and man­age­ment, and orga­ni­za­tion­al train­ing, worked with the six women of the gov­ern­ing board on lead­er­ship train­ing.  We devised a cur­ricu­lum that taught the basics of orga­ni­za­tion­al train­ing, long-term plan­ning, and eval­u­a­tions, using a pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion mod­el.  In the end, the women devel­oped a mis­sion state­ment, learned about how to com­plete each of their roles on the board, and cre­at­ed short and long term objec­tives and action plans to meet them.

Lead­er­ship train­ing activity 

Their short term action plan includes:

1) Imple­ment­ing the sewing work­shop with 20 women participating

2)  Increas­ing the num­ber of kids at the day­care to 15 daily

3) Hold­ing a fundrais­er in July to cel­e­brate their one year anniversary

Their long term action plan includes:

1) Find­ing fund­ing to con­struct their com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter out of bricks and cement so that it will last more than two years

2) Find­ing a mar­ket for their prod­ucts and rais­ing their indi­vid­ual house­hold incomes by at least 25%

3) Imple­ment­ing social pro­grams for women and girls in the com­mu­ni­ty such as coun­sel­ing, wom­en’s health, edu­ca­tion, and fitness.