ELEMENT 1: OUTREACH Women’s community education recognises that schooling has been oppressive for many. Many women were further marginalised and excluded from education due to factors such as class and ethnicity. Women’s community education recognises that the return to education is fraught with difficulties and challenges. Outreach work is based on understanding the issues and barriers that the traditional education system has generated. It is committed to building trust, confidence and equality of relationship. OUTREACH PRACTICE Through outreach work, women are invited to rejoin education in a new way and with new direction as women together. Core Practice We a) Make informal contact with women: word-of-mouth invitation, discussion and promotion with neighbours, friends, acquaintances b) Promote our group: posters and other forms of promotion are placed in key points around the neighbourhood (examples school, surgery, supermarket, social services and community centres, FAS, MABS) with contact names and numbers, group times and location c) Work proactively to make contact with excluded and isolated women Extended Practice We a) Make contact with women through community and women’s organisations; b) Make contact with those who work with women in the locality (examples include teachers, public health nurses, community workers, education workers, youth workers, social workers, employment services) c) Promote our work: articles in newspapers, giving talks where requested on the benefits of being part of a women’s community education group d) Establish connections with outreach workers / neighbourhood workers working with women e) Engage in intensive face-to-face work to encourage hard – to –reach women (for example through the neighbourhood work approach) f) Develop specific initiatives targetted at traveller women, refugee and asylum seeking women, women in minority groups and women experiencing isolation
AONTAS Women’s Community Education Quality Assurance Framework November 2005
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