The State Secretary of Equality Promotion (SEPI), in co-operation with the Indonesian Ministry of Women’s and Children’s Affairs has held training for women’s groups in rural areas to produce food products such as seaweed chips, banana juice and marmalade.
Secretary of State Idelta Maria Rodrigues said that the co-operative project would increase women’s skills and provide them a way to increase their household income.
She said she planned for the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and the Environment to provide training in marketing to these women’s groups to further help them.
Increasing household income could also have the effect of reducing domestic violence rates, as domestic violence most commonly occurred in low-income families, she said.
“They are now displaying their creativity and commitment even though they have only small funds and limited time. In two weeks they have shown very good results,” Rodrigues said.
The products made by these women are now available in Dili supermarkets.
The trainer for the program was from Indonesia, and groups involved included orange juice producers from Aileu, banana juice producers from Natabora in Manatutu, chip producers from Ataruo and marmalade producers from Mehara in Lautem.
The Secretary for State for Industry and Cooperative Filipus “Nino” Pereira said his department had received business proposals via SEPI for from the banana juice producers as well as the marmalade producers, but added that these proposals needed to be looked into in order to guarantee the sustainability of these businesses
“We have had experiences with some other groups which submitted proposals but didn’t actually exist,” he said.
