Inclusion of Women in Social Vulnerability in Mato Grosso State (Brazil): Teresa de Benguela Extension Program

Abstract

Teresa de Benguela Extension Program aims to include women at risk or social vulnerability, taking a human and specific look at this part of society lacking of qualification and opportunity. The name of the program is a way we found to honor the warrior woman who saved many lives through the Quilombos in the State of Mato Grosso. In 2017 the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Mato Grosso (IFMT) qualified more than 200 women, in 12 different projects in several municipalities of the State of Mato Grosso. The program is divided into three interconnected stages: 1. The empowerment of women: through workshops and dynamics in the field of psychopedagogy, in which women are motivated and led to self-knowledge. At this stage, the main tool used is the Map of Life methodology. 2. Technique and technology: each project that makes up the program has a proposal to empower women in a certain technique or technology domain, from which the woman will be able to enter the labor market or open her own business. 3. Entrepreneurship: training on entrepreneurship, teaching them how to set up their own business and how to produce on a commercial scale, being able to reach the market. At this stage, women study how to add value and income in their lives, and their families, with the techniques learned. With this, we prepare each one of the women for life and for the world of work. With these steps, the actions developed bring empowerment, technique and entrepreneurship to each woman served, developing transversal and emotional skills that, together, make them capable of owning their own businesses and exercising their citizenship with more esteem and dignity. With the activities proposed in the program there is an individual emancipation of the women served and the reach of a collective conscience that assists in overcoming a state of social dependence, each one discovers the capacity to make, by itself, changes necessary to grow and strengthen.