The key role of the Women's Support Network is to act as a collective
voice for community based women's groups in the Greater Belfast areas
and to support the autonomy of those groups. Key work areas are
Networking, Research, Policy Change and Support to Women's Groups.
Since the establishment of the first
women's centre, the sector has grown substantially and nowadays there
are a number of well established women’s centres located in local
communities across Belfast as well as a number of other women’s groups
and projects in the city. Women's
Support Network was established with the main aim to be:
"A
forum for exchange of information and support between women’s
groups, forging collective strategies and responses to policies and
policy-makers, providing a resource of expertise and research to the
needs and development of women’s group from the Greater Belfast
area"
The
Women’s Support Network believes that the art of networking is finding
and representing the commonalties we share, while at the same time
affirming, valuing and giving voice to our differences as organisations
and individuals within them. It
exists to safeguard the autonomy and rights of community women’s
groups as centres of local democracy and agents of democratic debate.
The Women’s Support Network is not only accessible to its constituency
but also directed by it. It
seeks to encourage and advance the full participation of it’s
membership and in particular those groups of women who are marginalised
or unheard within our society.
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