Peace Scholarships
UNIFEM Australia works with the IDP Peace Scholarship Trust of IDP Education to provide opportunities for young women to study at Australian Universities who have already contributed to peace and gender equality in their own country, and who have pledged to continue that commitment on their return.
We have sponsored students from the Pacific who have studied a wide range of subjects and attended various universities throughout Australia. We have also sponsored five law students from Afghanistan, including three students currently studying in Sydney.
Meet our Current Peace Scholars
Shahrnaz Rafi
Studying Masters of Law
I am a graduate of the Law and Political Sciences Faculty of the Kabul University. I was born in 1983 in capital city of Afghanistan, which is known as a war torn or post-conflict country among the developing Asian nations, one that is still suffering a fragile security situation in addition to three decades of civil conflicts. I have experienced continuous conflicts in my country and have witnessed my people suffering from losing a member of their family, starvation, disabilities, migration, basic rights abuse, killing, violence, ignorance, illiteracy.
I migrated to Pakistan for 7 years mostly during the dark years of the Taliban Regime with my family. There I had the chance to continue my basic education contrary to the majority of Afghan girls in my country, which faced forced postponement or various other reasons for not being able to be educated. While returning back to Afghanistan I got the chance to work with various International and National Organizations. I wish for a stable peace and security for my country and considering the effects of conflict on my people I want to offer my best possible supports for them. I got the very rare opportunity to study in Australia (which I am very thankful to UNIFEM Australia and IDP) and will return as a Master of Law to my country. This will make me able to find possible ways of implementing my Community Projects targeting Orphans, girl’s education sector and women’s economical independence projects.
We would like to thank ACL, a leading Australian provider of academic English preparation programs, whom generously provided a Full Time 13 week English Language Course to support one of the 2008 Peace Scholarship students from Afghanistan.
Previous Peace Scholars
As a result of the Peace Scholarship Programme many of these women have returned to their communities and continued their commitment to promoting women's rights and improving the lives of women in their communities.
Zohra and Haseena Askeer graduated from Macquarie University in November 2009 with a Masters in International Trade and Commerce Law. Zohra and Haseena have now returned to Afghanistan and are looking forward to putting their new degree into practice.
Ermelinda de Costa Monteiro returned to Timor-Leste in February 2010 after studying English in Australia. Her experience in Australia will allow her to return to her home and continue working and advocating for women's reproductive health as a midwife.
Nasima Rahmani after her Peace Scholarship, Nasima has returned to her community working for ActionAid in Afghanistan as the Women's Rights Coordinator.
Recently Nasima visited ActionAid in Italy and spoke at several high level events across the country to raise awareness of the issue of Violence against Women both in Italy and Afghanistan.
UNIFEM Australia is extremely proud of the work Nasima is doing in Afghanistan and believes that many other young women through the Peace Scholarship Programme will be able to contribute towards the empowerment of women in their communities.
Powerful Women's Exhibition
To celebrate UNIFEM's 30th Anniversary, UNIFEM Australia with Sydney based photographer Yann Le Berre developed the Powerful Women's Exhibition. This photographic exhibition celebrates Australia women who have made a postive contribution to Australian society and features women such as Margaret Olley AC, Lisa Wilkinson and Christine Anu and MP Linda Burney.
The exhibition is continuing its tour of Australia with KPMG hosting it in its offices in 2010.
Projects funded in 2010
Empower Women Migrant Workers in Indonesia
This project is working on multiple levels to protect women migrants: we work with women before they depart to train them in their rights as workers, employment responsibilities and give them basic information about contracts; we work with women once they arrive in country to ensure they have safe housing, legitimate contracts and workplace rights. We also work with women who are returning to their families after periods away and support them to re-enter their family life.
Empower Women Migrant Workers in Indonesia, is in line with the overall theme of International Women's Day 2010: Empowering Women to End Poverty by 2015. By focusing on women migrant workers, UNIFEM is aiming to address one of the major effects of poverty. Women are migrating independently, as temporary economic migrants, largely as a family survival strategy. While it is true that women have improved their economic situation, women migrant workers in particular, continuously become victims of exploitation, abuse and discrimination as they move for employment abroad. The lack of economic opportunities, coupled with inflation, creates a challenge for women migrant returnees who would like to remain within their communities. However, many of the returnees, due to their social and financial pressures, may decide to re-migrate if economic opportunities in their hometowns are not available or inadequate.
UNIFEM's project to Empower Women Migrant Workers in Indonesia (part of the UNIFEM Asia Pacific and Arab States Regional Program to Empower Women Migrant Workers) has been working in Indonesia since September 2001 with other stakeholders to address some of the key concerns of poor women migrant workers. This project seeks to empower women migrant workers from a gender and rights based development perspective by addressing their concerns and ensuring their rights and recognised and respected.
Projects funded in 2009
Markets Project in the Pacific
UNIFEM Pacific's 'Market Project' aims to improve conditions in rural marketplaces and increase women's participation in the management of these markets, which will result in increased integration of gender sensitive policies and promotion of women’s equality and empowerment.
Trading in fresh food markets is the only opportunity for many women in the Pacific to participate in the urban economy. Indeed, 85% of market vendors are women with 75% coming from rural areas. These women can travel for several hours in order to get to a market and then struggle to obtain access to the best positions for selling. These women not only risk their personal safety by travelling to markets in the early hours of the morning but also sometimes travel with children.
Once there, women can spend several days selling their goods, sometimes sleeping at the markets, risking being hassled by young men and drunkards. Due to lack of amenities at most markets women do not have access to adequate facilities including bathrooms. The cost associated with attending the markets can sometimes outweigh the money they receive from selling their goods, resulting in women skipping meals to save money and the cycle of poverty continues for the women and their families.
This project will ensure better conditions in the market place for women vendors through improved representation and partnerships with local governments, thereby increasing household incomes and reducing poverty.
Ensuring food security and empowering women in Liberia
The project aims to help women overcome certain limitations they face in the agricultural sector, particularly land ownership and access to tools and seeds. Although women in Liberia can legally own and inherit land, areas of the population are not aware of this and in several areas the customary law of limiting ownership to male family members is still practised.
UNIFEM, working with the Ganta Concern Women’s Group (GCWG) in Liberia, will provide 48 acres of land intended to increase the production levels of the current small-scale cassava farms. These farms are run primarily by women, as cassava is considered a women’s crop. Previously these farms have only produced enough food to adequately feed the household but with the extra farming areas, UNIFEM hopes that they can increase production which would improve their economic opportunities.
Projects funded in 2008
Timor-Leste - Rural Women’s Leadership and Participation in Nation Building
Our 2008 IWD Fundraising was directed to a Programme for Enhancing Rural Women’s Leadership and Participation in Nation Building in Timor-Leste (PERWL). Over the last several years, UNIFEM trained 1265 potential women candidates across 13 districts to stand in council elections in Timor-Leste. Altogether 1300 women were in fact elected. Funds raised by UNIFEM Australia at 2008 IWD events will support a pilot project in three districts to build the capacity of these women to be effective leaders in their districts and support them in their roles as councillors. This training will include leadership training, gender awareness, formulating gender sensitive policies, gender budgets, accountability to constituencies, as well as public speaking.
Lao Women's Economic Empowerment through the Handcrafted Textile Industry
Camilla Franks "Women of the World" Book released in 2007 has raised over $60,000 which was donated to a Laos project focussing on Women's Economic Empowerment through the Handcrafted Textile Industry.
The projects aims were to increase the economic security of women and men in the Lao village of Paktheap and therefore have a positive impact on the village as a whole.
Camilla described her reason for becoming involved "as a woman, I was inspired by the work UNIFEM do to grant women freedom around the world. As someone whose label is dedicated to the celebration of women, it was important for me to lend a voice to the many whispers of women who are denied their basic rights and privileges".
As a result of the program there have been significant outcomes:
- there have been increased domestic and international sales of their handicrafts
- 225 children attended school at the end of the project compared to 110 children at the beginning of the project
- there have been key upgrades to school facilities as a result of donation of funds
- improved housing for 31 families
- women play a more prominent role in decision-making in the family and community
- the village has set up a village handicraft revolving fund (VHRF) to contribute to greater economic security
Projects Funded in 2007
Capacity Building for EVAW organisations in the Pacific
As a result of a successful International Women's Day in 2007, UNIFEM Australia was able to fund the Capacity Building for Ending Violence Against Women project in the Pacific.
UNIFEM Pacific organized two capacity building workshops in proposal writing in the Pacific, to assist organisations working to eliminate violence against women (VAW), to further develop innovative and cutting-edge proposals in a form that they may be submitted in future to, and considered by, appropriate funding donors.
The first workshop, held in Port Moresby, saw 14 PNG organisations participate in in-depth and inter-active training over a period of 8 days. Independent consultant, Dr Juliet Hunt, assisted organisations to develop a common underlying approach to projects ending VAW, at all levels and in many different sectors of PNG.
Participant organisations, now able to complete a gender analysis of the problem of VAW, are reviewing, rewriting and representing their important proposals to other donors in PNG. The PNG training sessions were extremely timely with the recent expressions by the PNG Prime Minister, Mr Michael Somare, of his commitment to the elimination of VAW in PNG.
The Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre ran its second capacity building workshop for Pacific organisations in Suva from 7-15 February 2008.