KUCHING: A community project at Kampung Beladin involving 50 female participants who included local community leaders and women from the B40 households, especially single mothers, was successfully organised by The Sarawak Initiatives (TSI) aspiring leaders from June 17 to June 19.
TSI in their press release yesterday said that the main goal of the project was to enhance the skills of women to enable them to participate in commercial activities to improve their income.
“The Community Project seeks to address the eradication of poverty by providing motivation, support, and encouragement to women in the rural areas.
“At the same time, it is to bring about social change for them to be active within their kampungs and to provide engagement of their activities with the urban populations hence bridging the rural and urban socio-economic development,” the press statement stated.
The project initiated by the aspiring leaders of TSI is hoped to be generating greater interest.
“TSI hopes that the Sarawak government will further provide incentives to bring about socio-economic change and empowerment of women in the rural areas.
“This strategy carried out by TSI would be the first step to engage women from the rural areas and TSI hopes to see their efforts and the efforts by the women turn to meaningful and fruitful commercial ventures later,” they said.
The three-day community project entitled ‘Empowering Poor Rural Women’ was jointly organised with Swinburne University and Craun Research Sdn Bhd.
The five main objectives of the project included capitalising on the skills and knowledge; improving the livelihood diversification strategies among women; utilising local resources to generate income for women in Kampung Beladin; optimising human capital within the households to help generate income and creating a community engagement platform for TSI members.
Among the activities organised during the programme were a cooking workshop entitled “ Bengkel Pemprosesan Mi Kuning Berasaskan Sago”, an e-business workshop, and financial management workshop.
“A research paper on Rural Poverty and Gender led by Professor Niaz, an economics professor from Monash University, assisted by Dr Lucy Sebli, a political scientist from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) was also part of the Beladin Community Project,” TSI said.
Apart from that, TSI also conveyed its appreciation to Datuk Seri Rohani Abdul Karim and Jabatan Pendaftaran Pertubuhan Malaysia under Malaysian Incentive Community Empowerment (MyICE) for providing funding for the project.
“For more inquiries on TSI’s upcoming projects, please give TSI a call at 019-876 7928,” said the statement.
For the record, the project was headed by project leader Mohammad Syahrimin Sahadan, a postgraduate student in Development Study at Universiti Malaya, and assisted by specialists Dr Lucy Sebli, a lecturer from UNIMAS; Elizabeth Voong, a Lecturer from Swinburne, and Professor Dr M. Naiz Asadullah Professor in Economics from Monash University Malaysia.
