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Women Leaders Strengthen Their Management Skills   
Oct. 3, 2008—For the past month, 26 women from eight countries have come together in Mexico City to share, debate and learn about what it takes to be an effective manager and persuasive leader. They came from urban neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro and remote, agricultural lands of Colombia. They survived wars in Angola and El Salvador. Some had MBAs and others never went to high school. But they were all dedicated to one thing: changing their communities for the better. “There is a great challenge for women and families in my country,” said Clara Marina Rodríguez of El Salvador, who works with the Center for the Development of Women in San Salvador. Although that country’s civil war ended in the 1990s, “there were many widows and many orphans.” Clara Marina’s center provides these women and youth with job skills and social development. CEDPA’s forty-seventh Global Women in Management training, held September 8 to October 3 in Mexico City, gave these women a chance to improve their skills for effective community development. During the training, the emerging women leaders studied the latest trends in effective management; advanced their skills in financial oversight, fundraising, supervision and communication; and developed greater confidence to lead. For María Concepción Matabanchoy Palacios (pictured above), who works with indigenous farmers in southern Colombia, the workshop was “very meaningful.”
She has worked for years to expand agricultural cooperatives for small-scale farmers in her community, where many girls still do not complete their basic education and poverty is all too common. Despite her success at improving agricultural production, advancing women’s decision-making within community councils, and introducing land stewardship so that the resources will be sustainable for future families, her org anization continues to struggle for resources. “I now know how to write proposals,” she says, and plans to apply for funding to expand her work when she returns to Colombia. She also plans to train others within her community to transfer her newfound skills in planning and project management. For more than 30 years, CEDPA has trained developing-country women to advance international development and change the social and political context that impedes opportunity for women and girls. The Global Women in Management program is CEDPA’s longest running training program, with thousands of graduate worldwide. The workshop responds to study after study that has shown that investing in women advances community development. Institutions including the World Bank have documented how increasing women’s educational attainment and prom oting their equal opportunity in the labor force and public life can reduce poverty and promote national growth. Investing in women also greatly enhances the well-being of families and their children, who are more likely to survive and thrive if their mothers are healthy and educated. CEDPA supports post-workshop learning through its one-year coaching program, where participants are paired with a senior advisor for a structured program of personal and professional coaching. These graduates will join CEDPA’s network of more than 5,200 alumni from over 150 countries. CEDPA’s Global Women in Management program has been supported since 2005 by the ExxonMobil Foundation’s Educating Women and Girls Initiative. This support has provided scholarships for more than 250 women leaders to attend workshop in Mexico, Nigeria and the United States. Learn more about CEDPA's training programs and alumni. |
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