NSCW officials, resource persons along with the Advisor and NCW Member Secretary at the two-day capacity building workshop at Kohima on October 8.
NCW launches initiative in Nagaland to empower women
Morung Express News
Kohima | October 8
Making a progressive move, the National Commission for Women (NCW) has launched its first initiative in the Northeast, starting with Nagaland, aimed at empowering women through livelihood development, disaster resilience, and tourism promotion.
In line with this, a two-day capacity building workshop on ‘Building resilient communities- women and sustainable ecosystem in Nagaland’ held at SIRD, Auditorium, Kohima. The programme was organised by the Nagaland State Commission for Women (NSCW) and supported by National Commission for Women (NCW).
Speaking at the inaugural programme, Meenakshi Negi, IFS and Member Secretary of NCW, emphasised the need for a holistic approach that involves various stakeholders to bring real change to the ground.
Explaining why NCW has taken this venture, Negi maintained that addressing women’s grievances requires more than just redressal mechanisms.
“What we realised is that it’s not enough just to talk about grievance redressal, if we really want to deal with grievances and bring about complete resolution of problems, then we have to think beyond just addressing the grievances” she stated.
The root cause of the problems, she stated, lies elsewhere adding that “one of those places is economic empowerment without which we cannot really have redressal of grievances and bring women into the mainstream of economy.”
Consequently, Negi said, the NCW is shifting its focus from grievance redressal to empowerment in the real sense for ‘women development to women-led development.’
And given the pivotal economic contribution of women in the Northeast, she said, this is the ideal place to start. “In the northeast what could be better than economically empowering women out of the natural bounty that the region is endowed with” stated Negi.
Nevertheless, she also reminded that the real test will be in translating the outcomes of these consultations into actionable plans on the ground with the support of all the line departments and stakeholders.
Advisor for Social Welfare, Wangpang Konyak said women who constitute half of the world’s population have always performed their role from managing the household economy and taking care of the livelihood of the family.
As such, he viewed that if women can be sensitised about alternative income generation activities and are offered support services through information and knowledge on sustainable and resilient management of natural and agricultural resources, it will have a positive impact on their economic growth and the ecology.
Non-Timber Food Products (NTFPs) as major contributors to livelihoods, particularly for rural communities, Konyak was of the view that NTFP collection and marketing can increase their economic empowerment.
He expressed hope that the two-day workshop will contribute in formulating policies to reach out to all indigenous women in the northeast region and equip them with skills and knowledge, thereby helping them to save the planet in the long run.
Women entrepreneurship has long been a cornerstone of Naga society, with women playing vital roles in the economy by contributing to 44.7% of its workforce and owning 21.6% of its enterprises, most of them with self-employed and informal micro businesses.
This was shared by Martha R. Ritse Secretary, Department of Social Welfare who also observed that there’s still much scope for further growth, particularly as the component of sustainable ecosystem is yet to be incorporated.
She also emphasised on the need to address the unique challenges women entrepreneurs in Nagaland are facing, enhance their understanding of gender dynamics and foster their leadership in disaster resilience and climate action, and provide the much needed support and guidance, in effect, creating an enabling business ecosystem, through which women entrepreneurship can take off in the state.
Fostering women’s leadership
In her keynote address, NSCW Chairperson, W Nginyeih Konyak said the objective of this workshop is to integrate the outcomes of the key initiatives, of all the departments and agencies towards promoting entrepreneurship among women based on NTFP and to create a unified framework for further capacity-building across Nagaland, ensuring empowering women and enhancing community resilience.
This workshop, she said, also seeks to foster women’s leadership in disaster resilience and climate action aiming gender specific challenges and to enhance understanding of gender dynamics in disaster risk and resilience, climate action and promote sustainable economic development through NTFP processing based entrepreneurship, storage, value addition, marketing and develop gender responsive strategies for disaster relief, response and climate action.
The inaugural programme was followed by technical sessions covering various topics. The second day will have technical sessions as well.
The programme is being organised in collaboration with 12 departments viz. Forest, Urban Development, NSDMA, NEN, NSRLM, MSME, Industries & Commerce, Bio-resource, NEIDA, Women Resource, Nagaland Bee Keeping and Honey Mission, Life Connect and the Bank.
