10 Nov 2022

Femina Woman Organisation is set to celebrate its 10th anniversary tomorrow at Gaborone’s Travel Lodge.

In an interview, the organisation’s co-founder and programmes coordinator for Lobatse, Ms Keamogetse Nkgare narrated how the organisation had been transforming and empowering women in the town and across the country, hence the theme; An Empowered Woman.

She said the non-governmental organisation was formed in 2009 and officially registered in 2012 by Ms Lorato Macheng, Ms Tiny Mapharing and herself, who were tertiary institution students at the time.

She said they formed the organisation after realising that women were largely marginalised and required holistic empowerment to achieve their dreams.

“The main mandate of Femina Woman is to empower women and girls in all spheres of life. What we are trying to do is to transform the girl child and women in general.

We have annual programmes and at the end of the year we hold goal-setting workshops,” she said.

She said through their workshops and programmes, they encouraged and assisted women to set goals and missions for themselves so that they could have something guiding them during the year.

She further said they held motivational and inspirational talks dubbed Power Up, whereby they invited women of varying careers to motivate and empower other women with business skills.

“We also have many engagements during the year, where we talk about such issues as relationships, parenting, monetary issues and gender-based violence in our society and discuss how we can help women regarding these issues.

We also have initiatives where we bring women together under one roof and through group sessions provide assistance to them on how to pursue their dreams,” she added.

Since 2012, Ms Nkgare said Femina Woman had grown in terms of membership and engagements with women.

The organisation has so far spread its foot prints from Gaborone to other places such as Lobatse, Molepolole, Good Hope and Tonota. Femina Woman was launched in 2018 in Lobatse, where they managed to stage many women empowerment and business mentorship programmes.

“We also have school projects and programmes through which we mentor school girls.

In 2020 we ventured into a programme with Letsopa Junior Secondary School, through which programme we hold goal-setting workshops with pupils and also empower young girls on self-awareness, self-worth, self-love and self-confidence.

We want to build our children and help them pursue their dreams and visions from a young age.

We want to expand this programme across all the schools in Lobatse,” she said.

Though she was happy with the impact Femina Woman had made in Lobatse, she called for assistance from community members on mentoring learners and empowering girls in the town.

“Eventhough we want to bridge the gap and see parents working with us to empower the girl child, in most cases when we invite members of the community to come to our engagements they don’t turn up,” she said.  ENDS