Give 20 women of the Old City opportunity to access the job market though life planning programs. Strenghten the personality of this women participants, capacitating them with tecnical knowledge and vocational tools to be succesful while still being stay-at-home moms.

NAME OF PROJECT:   
Adult Female Training Project

What will it do?
STAGE 1: TRAINING
It will take 20 women for a period of 4 months through a job training program to be educated in basic labor skills in hotel services.  The hotel service module which is done in 3 months includes the following educational plans:
• Cleaning, maintenance and decoration of rooms and public hotel areas.
• Washing, Sewing and Ironing of Clothes in an industrial setting
• Nutrition, hygiene, culinary skills and design of menus
• Etiquette and table service
• Human development, personality and culture
• Job finding skills such as interviewing, curriculum design, speech and proper dressing
• Life planning
• Personal finances
• Leadership qualities

STAGE 2: INTERNSHIP
The NEXT 2 months will be devoted to in job training in different hotels that have been contacted as places of internship as to polish their learned skills. 
After the first four months any of the participants that, regardless of the job opportunities, desire to continue a more entrepreneurial approach to their newly learned skills will be given the opportunity to participate in specialization courses on their chosen line of work added to entrepreneurial courses.

What will it benefit and how?
It will initially benefit women that live in the historic district that have probably no education certificate to enter the job market, heads of their own families and have demonstrated in the initial interview a desire to overcome their socio-economic situation.
Having realized a minor intervention of just the first 3 months on job skills has made me realize that even though we were giving these women job skills their human development left them handicapped to join the formal economy and many retired from their all the school exams.  This made me realize that much more was needed to keep these women inspired, thus the introduction of the Life Plan and job finding skills as well as the self esteem enhancing methods.
The basic hypothesis is that these women have grown surrounded by an aggressive and violent environment which has not allowed them space for personal or professional growth.  Giving them these tools will permit them to become social capital and not social burden.  Plus we work under the premise that women being the main caregiver in our society will in their turn influence the life choices of their children.
Due to their family situation we don´t expect them all to want to enter the work force and we have created the alternate route of being self employed and as a cooperative they would receive the benefits of the amount of work they would give to the project.

What is your role?
My role involves the choosing and interviewing of the women with a social worker, the school director as well as to establish the necessary curriculum to be developed in the education process, additional to doing all the necessary work to procure the funding for the project.

How will it be measured?
By the grades they get in the program, assistance in the courses, personal interviews, internship reports and initial and final survey of the participants.

Does it meet the criteria for projects laid out in the project description?

1. Engage the Fellow’s personal passion:  Yes, the work with adult women is a personal and passionate area of work for me as a woman especially.  Life changing programs are especially important to me.
2. Address a pressing need:  The need not only to include women in the work forcé as dismembered families seem to be the norm these days helps not only bring about a change in their social status but that of their whole families.
3. Be innovative and distinctive:  The innovation in this program that makes it different than any other adult education program is that it the trade in itself is only part of the education program the base of the idea is also to give them other skills that would allow them to find and keep a job.  These are more personal and involve a lot of human development.
4. Make a real difference:  The difference is felt not only in these women but also in their families and social area of influence, by giving them leadership skills they become catalyses for social change.
5. Be ambitious, a stretch:  Taking this program to a bigger level would mean to be able to replicate it in other communities.  But it is also ambitious in searching to do several of these programs a year as to educate even more women.  The size of 20 a class has proven effective as a measure of self evaluation and camaraderie.
6. Be able to show measurable results in 12-18 months:  The program being only of six months is already showing measurable results in the change we perceive in the new graduating class as compared to the earlier program.
7. Leverage the energy, skills and resources of others:  The foundation has associated itself with the Oficina del Casco Antiguo as a source of educational professionals that assist in the day to day of the program and have personally helped in making this project work.  Also in the introduction of the other modules we have brought the skills of other NGOS such as the Red Cross and Fundes which have the knowledge and skills to impart some of the courses.
8. Take on a life of its own:  The organization of the Foundation in terms of the board of directors and administration has allowed it to be prepared for the future.  The sustainability of the project should come with association with hotels who would pay for the training of future employees allowing us to choose and train them.
9. Promote the values the Fellow holds most dear:  It promotes values such as personal growth, responsibility, community, family, self esteem, social cooperation.
10. Be a source of pride for the Leadership Initiative:  I am myself very proud of the goals and the way we have achieved them and feel that a program such as this one should be replicated in many communities as by the interaction with the participants I have felt that we are really making a difference.

Why is it worth of CALI?
Because we are taught that we have to make a difference and I believe that we are making a difference as education, especially of women who are the leaders in their homes will give them the right skills to take their families in the right direction thus giving them tools to make life changing decisions.  In a way, the program is trying to bring the skills learned in CALI to another side of the community one that needs this kind of life push.