Flying the flag for women

FWIN is an information network for community-based women's centres, groups, individuals and organisations.

For 15 years FWIN has been working in the City on all sides, but particularly closely with local women's organisations and develops relationships with women's organisations regionally, nationally and internationally.

FWIN was established in Janurary of 1994, at a meeting in the Verbal Arts Centre, women who attended the meeting affirmed the idea for a Women's Network. The vision was the provision of a supportive place for women and women's groups to meet from all the different neighbourhoods and different venues all over Londonderry.

Over the intervening years these gatherings have provided opportunities for women to discuss health issues, education matters, and politics, to try out new ideas, make new contacts and friends and to offer and exchange information.

Among two of the organisation's most recent projects which have enjoyed success are the Waterside Women Working Face-to-Face and the Women's health Forum.

Waterside women working face to face

This project was a community relations project funded by the City Council support grant and facilitated by FWIN- the groups involved were Lincoln Courts women together and the Gorbals women's group – it entailed eight weeks working together and ended with a two-day residential in Lusty Beg.

Women's Health Forum

This project enabled FWIN and local women's groups to work in partnership and share experiences with other women's networks and groups throughout Londonderry, Strabane and Limavady districts.

Another hugely successful project was Interface women in which FWIN worked on a pilot programme with women who live on the interface.

In all 14 women from a local interface worked closely for 10 weeks building up relationships and doing some negotiation skills training to build up the skills required to work safely and confidently on the interface – this project will hopefully be funded to be carried out in communities that request it. It was funded by the Council's Community Safety Partnership.

According to Catherine Cooke, who administrates the FWIN, the women came together to get to know each other to reduce the stereotyping and to begin to build up a trust in each other so they could communicate with each other when tensions were raised. The women also worked through scenarios and situations and began to look at sectarianism, mediation and negotiation language useful to defusing tensions.

"There is much to learn, this was a first step for many and it could not be too learning focused. However it worked very well and the speakers we engaged with told honest stories of interface work and said it was a lonely place to be and spelled out the reality for people who try to bring it to a stop.

"The women by the end o f the programme gave out each other's phone numbers for contact with each other when incidents happen; this is a first step in the process of engagement on the interface."