To continue promoting a greater participation of women and persons with disabilities, the Roads for Development Supporting Programme (R4D-SP) Bridging Phase conducted two training programmes on ILO's Gender Equality and Disability Inclusion (GEDI) in March and June to August 2022. These training sessions aimed to further bring awareness of gender equality and disability inclusion to increase the participation of women and persons with disabilities in the works of rural roads development and rehabilitation.

The first training was in clustered arrangement (two clusters, six municipalities each) targeted to build the capacity of government staff at national and municipal level and the second training focused on targeting more local communities and government staff at the municipality level. A total of 58 staff of the Timor-Leste’s Ministry of Public Works and Ministry of State and Administration, of which 24 were women, participated in the GEDI training. They represented the two Ministries at the national and municipal (12 municipalities) level.

The second training reached to a total of 267 both municipal government staff and local communities from 11 municipalities: Baucau, Lautem, Aileu, Viqueque, Manatuto, Manufahi, Ainaro, Bobonaro, Liquica, Ermera and Covalima. From the total number of the participants, 35 percent of which were women and 0.4 percent were persons with disabilities.

These trainings were conducted in collaboration with Fokupers, a local organization deals with issues on gender-based violence and human rights violations against women and children and Rae Hadomin Timor Oan (RHTO), a National Disabled People’s Organisation in Timor-Leste advocating for the rights of all people with all types of disability. The two-day training sessions were divided into a day session for each gender and disability issues.

Using a participatory training approach with games, group discussions and role plays, the gender training by Fokupers focused on cultural norms and expectations around roles and responsibilities, legal framework of gender equality, physical and attitudinal barriers that entrench marginalisation and inequality and so forth. Meanwhile, the disability training by RHTO raised the awareness and understanding about the rights of persons with disabilities, the untapped talents and importance of disability inclusion.

Domingos Ason M. do Carmo, Ministry of Public Work’s Community Development Officer (CDO) in Covalima, agreed that the training was an eye opening to eliminate the attitudinal marginalization. He also appreciated the improved capacities shown by the participating government staff and local communities in gender equality and disability inclusion.

“I have become more aware of the attitudinal marginalization that women and persons with disabilities face. Now I know those are discriminatory actions and need to be eliminated. I am thankful for this training and highly recommend for this training to be conducted in the Suco level so many people can be aware of the aspect of gender equality and disability inclusion,” he stated.

A similar view was also shared by Anacleto da Costa, the Suco Chief from Liquica Municipality. “Now I know how to better support women and persons with disabilities so they can have better opportunities at home, work, and in the society.”

These training sessions concluded with positive feedbacks from the participants. They appraised the training for opening their eyes and raising the awareness about equal treatments towards men and women and non-offensive ways to communicate with people with disabilities. They also appraised the training for making them more knowledgeable on various issues related gender equality and disability inclusion, including gender-based violence, among others and they would continue widely disseminating the information that they learned with their fellows in their community.