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Empower Women for Change

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Lead Organisation:
Empower Women for Change
Theme:
Award Amount:
£30,000.00

Empower Women for Change (EWFC) aims to inspire and empower diverse minority women in Scotland, through advancing their leadership and active citizenship in all aspects of life.

Our New Scot Talents Project facilitates New Scots’ integration by bolstering their skills, cultivating valuable experiences, fostering personal development, and instilling confidence. This initiative is designed to enhance people’s access to opportunities in employment, social enterprise, or further education.

New Scots reached
300

Key Information

Aims of the project:

  • Raising awareness about New Scots rights, equality and entitlements.
  • Providing further education opportunities
  • Certified courses,
  • Volunteering opportunities
  • Personal development
  • Raising awareness about social enterprise and skills to access to employability.

Key Information

Partnership

City of Glasgow College, Police Scotland

Geographical reach

Glasgow, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire

Dates

May 2023 – April 2024

Target Groups

Ethnic Minority Women, Refugees, Asylum Seekers, New Scots

Project Type

Spreading good practice

Situation

Minority women often encounter multiple barriers to accessing employment and education, including language difficulties, lack of childcare, financial hardship, lack of knowledge about rights and entitlements, among many other challenges. 

To address these barriers, we partnered with City of Glasgow College and Police Scotland to implement initiatives like IT skills workshops and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes, along with Budget Workshops on financial management, as well as sessions raising awareness of equality, rights, and entitlements. 

Involvement of New Scots in project

Over 300 service users benefited from the project.

Our journey began with a commitment to capacity building through a diverse array of workshops and courses, including:

  • Basic Information Technology (IT) Skills Workshops
  • College Classes
  • Social Enterprise Workshops Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Classes
  • English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Classes
  • Budget Workshops focusing on Financial Management
  • Volunteering Workshops
  • New Scots Series Courses

Impact

The project’s participants acquired new skills and experiences through volunteering and training. They:

  • developed their vocational skills.
  • increased knowledge about rights and entitlements, services and opportunities.
  • built connections with multiple diverse partners.
  • widened and exchanged opportunities with partners.
  • gained transferrable skills to become job-ready, confident, and assertive to access employment.
  • created connections and friendships between individuals and communities, leading to less isolation and improved wellbeing and mental health.
  • exchanged experience and learning from discussions and interactions of the project services.

Challenges encountered

  • Financial barriers – due to unanticipated high demand we encountered difficulties with travel expenses.
  • Time constraints
  • Reaching isolated women
  • Creating flyers in different languages.

Solutions

  • Securing additional funding to provide financial assistance to those in need and enabling ethnic minority women to access services and opportunities.
  • Using volunteers capacity as translators during our workshops and to print flyers in different languages.

Project Partners