GWR launches voter education campaign

Mar 28, 2015 News

“The most powerful thing we own is our vote. Want our vote? Address our issues!” this is the theme under which Guyanese Women Roundtable (GWR) plans to capture the attention of political parties contesting the upcoming May 11 General and Regional elections.
GWR operates as an inter-generational non-partisan civic engagement network, coordinated through CPIC Monique Helping Hands Support Centre. It has teamed up with Guyana National Youth Council (GNYC) and Merundoi in order to effectively convey the importance of voting to the Guyanese public, especially women.
The organisation decided to target women upon realising that females are oftentimes painted as the weaker sex, and the fact that society has been seeing an upsurge in violence against women.
GWR member, Dawn Stewart lamented, that in addition to all the challenges facing women in society, there is reluctance amongst females to exercise their civic right to vote, and to play influential roles in the political arena.
She explained that the organisation carried out a series of interviews and surveys involving 250 women from Georgetown to as far as Mahaicony, and discovered that the main reason behind women’s reluctance to vote, was the fact that they honestly believed that their current predicament will go unchanged.
She said, women from one community declared that they were distancing themselves from the political process. This was their decision because they are of the opinion that elected officials had willingly overlooked the value of women, and ignored the amount of women that were killed.
In addition , Dr. Stewart reported that one woman said she would not be voting because, “parliament has 33% women… but they might as well say zero per cent… because they do nothing for us… we need more women, and right now, I’m not gonna be involved because it’s not gonna change with those old men on top.”
Dr. Stewart responded to this particular issue by stating, “We need more women involved in politics, but involved in the right way. It is not enough just to be involved in politics as a political figure, but as a symbol of strength of women. We need to remain positive in order to make changes that are necessary.”
“It is not a matter of how many women ministers we have in the government, and how many are MPs, it’s a matter of how effective these women are. Whether in government, parliament, businesses, NGOs and so on… how effective we are, depends on how clearly, and how correctly we can judge the needs of our kind, the needs of our country, and the needs of our people.”
Dr. Stewart explained further, that in order to tap into the minds of women, GWR had to adopt a strategy where they brought each of the women’s individual concerns into perspective, and broke it up into more relatable terms.
“So we in turn had to ask someone, “are you a vendor? Do you want a better market? Voting can give you a better market!”
“In effect, the women were informed that their civic duty does not end at voting, but ventures into the understanding that the people have the power to change the direction in which the country is headed.”
In seeing that their collective vision becomes a success, GWR has made provision for a series of pre and post- election activities to be carried out. Pre-election activities include, weekly workshops, community voting education outreaches in at least four regions, distribution of both voter education and pledge cards, and forums with election candidates, beginning as early as the first week in April.
After a political body has been elected to serve Guyana, GWR plans on arranging a system where they are able to meet with Members of Parliament, re-evaluate projects, and continue education of civic participation and empowerment of women.

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GWR launches voter education campaign

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