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Women Empowerment through Legal Awareness (WELA) Program

What is it?
Started in December 2002 as a multi-year program, the Women Empowerment through Legal Awareness program educates grassroots women and men about laws to make them aware about their rights and respectful to the rights of their counterparts. WELA program is based on the principle that empowerment takes place through social dialog and sharing of information of government policies and national laws to grassroots women and men.

• Include rural women in a nationwide discussion on gender issues.
• Raise awareness among rural women of their economic, social, legal and cultural rights according to existing Cambodian laws.
• Discover ways together to implement these laws -and access those rights -at grassroots levels.
• Create tools and establish mechanisms for rural women to support each other at the local level to guarantee those rights under the laws.

How does it get started?

Baseline survey
The CO Unit conducts baseline survey before starting the WELA program in any new area. The baseline survey situates the status of legal protection of women and men of the particular commune, and their knowledge on their rights preserved in the laws. The objective of the Major Findings of Previous Baseline Survey Grassroots women have very poor knowledge and awareness on laws that protect their human rights. A high percentage of women are vulnerable to domestic baseline survey is to design a need-based WELA program for a particular new area.

Mini-conference
Following the baseline survey, the CO Unit organizes mini-conference in the commune. Local administration, police, civil society, NGOs, provincial administration and other involved parties are invited in the conference. The long-term goal of the miniconference is to develop partnership with the local administration. The immediate objective of the conference is to disseminate the survey findings among the participants to obtain their pledges to take joint action to address the identified issues.

Set-up core groups and orientation
At the end of the conference core groups are formed and introduced to the conference participants. Core groups are community based and there is one core group for each commune and each group comprises of 5-7 members(actual size of the core group depends on the number of villages in the commune). Core group members are 25-50 years of old, outspoken, and committed to spend significant time for the program. Core group members possess leadership skills, good interpersonal communication skills, and have basic literacy. Core group comprises of both male and female members. In fact, the CO Unit identifies the core group members prior to the conference and during the conference they are just introduced to the local administration, police, and other involved parties.

Capacity building of core groups
The core groups are provided with training to improve their capacity with relation to laws, law dissemination, and monitoring of law implementation. Trainings take place at two-levels. At one level, core group members are provided with trainings on laws organized in Phnom Penh. Law experts facilitate in this training. At another level, staff members of CO Unit train the core groups on methodologies of law dissemination and monitoring of law implementation. This training takes place in the commune in each month.

Village Meeting (law dissemination)
After getting training, members of the core groups organize meeting in their respective village. Both women and men participate in the meeting. In the meeting the core group members discuss on different laws. Participants are provided with different aspects of different laws, and legal provisions. Staff members of CO Unit also facilitate in the meeting. Government's plan and policy on gender equality in different sectors/areas and good practices/lessons learned on WELA program in other commune are also disseminated in the meeting.

Monitoring of law implementation and legal assistance
The core group members keep eyes on the incidence of violence (against women) in their respective village. They rush to the victim once they come to know any incidence of violence. At the first stage they negotiate the perpetrators to stop violence. If they fail to make the perpetrators stopped they report and pursue the local administration (village chief, police, and commune councillor) to intervene and take action against the perpetrators. They continue the persuasion until the perpetrator is brought to justice.

The CO Unit has been implementing the WELA program in these 6 communes in collaboration with civil society organizations-Neang Kongrey Association in Kampong Chhnang province, and BDASE in Pursat province, and local administration in Prey Veng province.

There are a total of 11,583 households in the target communes of WELA program. A total of 55,666 people (28,971 female and 26,695 male) live in these households. WELA program has target to provide legal education and assistance to all of these households side by side.