NATIONAL WOMEN’S MOVEMENT OF SURINAME (N.V.B.)

GENERAL INFORMATION

The NVB, established in June 1992 aims at gender equity and gender equality in the Surinamese society through the empowerment of individual women and women’s groups, especially grass-roots groups, in a sustainable way. The NVB office was established in 1995, after 13 years of voluntary work.

1. NVB POLICY
The policy the NVB has formulated for the period 1998 – 2003 contains the following elements:

Economic empowerment of women is one of the priority areas of policy, based on the structural financial economic crisis in the country: the NVB aims at expanding the possibilities of women and their families to deal with poverty and increase their access to resources and incomes, among other means through:

The promotion of female entrepreneurship, i.e. increasing the access of women (micro) entrepreneurs to knowledge, information, technology, credit, land and markets.
Increase the participation of women in non-traditional female occupations;
Increase the access of women to adequate housing.

Another priority area is the institutional strengthening of women’s groups.
Given the fact that women’s participation in the decision-making process is low, it is necessary to increase the capacity of women’s organizations and women’s groups to assist their target groups in solving problems related to poverty, development, gender equality and gender equity; to adequately manage their organizations and to adequately negotiate with all related actors.

A third priority area is the promotion of women’s rights.
The NVB thinks it necessary to promote the rights of women in daily life, especially the eradication of violence against women.

Networking
Networking with government agencies, NGO’s, CBO’s and other social actors is considered very important in order to implement the NVB policy.

Ethnic groups
The involvement of a broad variety of ethnic groups living in the country in the planning and implementation of NVB activities, is of importance to the NVB policy.