Women who have their hearts set on having a say in next year's local government election were yesterday involved in a leadership skills workshop held at City Hall.

The workshop will run for three days and is facilitated by women's rights activist, Karen De Souza.

The objective of the three-day activity is to enable each participant to develop self?awareness and to increase their leadership capacities.

According to programme co-ordinator, Chantelle Smith, yesterday's activity stemmed from a wider programme, which was being co-ordinated by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and was aimed at empowering women in local government across the country.

A consultation was held in June where co-ordinators met women who were already in local government positions and women activists and a strategy was drafted for the programme.

The programme is expected to run for a year and one of the components is training, to be done in six modules of which yesterday's was the first. Smith said that educator Bonita Harris trained trainers who would in turn work with other women all over the country.

"The idea is to help prepare women to increase their participation in the political process," Smith said.

The participants were chosen through local government bodies, community groups and political parties, whose women organisers contacted other women.

Community leaders were also asked to organise meetings, which the co-ordinators attended to inform the women about the programme.

After the workshop it is hoped that the participants would become more active in their communities and organise meetings where they would help to empower other women.

Over the next few weeks other such training sessions would be held around the country.

After the workshops all the participants would be further involved in training programmes which would be facilitated by persons more knowledgeable in local government. The workshops will focus on developing women's leadership skills.

During yesterday's programme the participants, numbering about 20, were placed into several groups and were asked to come up with some ideas of expressing themselves either by way of poems, mini skits or impromptu speeches. The aim of the activity was to get the contributions of all the participants and they all had to take an active part in whatever the group decided to do.

Later in the day De Souza was expected to speak to the women about their self-esteem which will focus on them placing a high value on self-respect, self-worth and self-image. Another topic expected to be touched on during the workshop is assertiveness, which would encourage the participants to act in their own interest, choosing what they wanted to be and do, emancipating themselves from today's forms of slavery and indentureship, standing up for legitimate rights, expressing views directly and openly, taking care of themselves and making good choices while taking others into account and without hurting others as assertiveness did not mean aggressiveness.

The participants were also expected to hear about the five-step empowerment programme: 1) identify and state the problem; 2) make a commitment to change; 3) collect information about self and problem area; 4) come up with a plan; 5) work with the plan.