The Aontas Wendi (women's education net working and development initiative) programme is designed to provide strategic and practical management training for AON TAS' women's network groups around the country.

It began in June last year and it will run until February 2000 with financial support from the Department of Education.

The initiative is aimed at 16 women's networks who in turn support a myriad of women's groups operating in their respective geographic areas. Some of the bigger networks represent up to 45 different women's groups in their regions.

Women's groups first began providing education and training courses for their members nearly 20 years ago. This need for self-provision was fuelled by the fact that few mainstream adult education courses were provided at times which suited women with family commitments. Women's groups stepped in to fill the demand for second-chance learning, often with little or no outside funding or support. In order to open up learning opportunities to as many women as possible, course fees were kept low and childcare was often provided free or at a low cost on-site.

Programmes were normally a mix of academic and personal development courses.

For many groups the effort of keeping their services running smoothly absorbed most of their time and energy and there was little opportunity for these groups to consider their activities from a strategic or future development perspective.

The WENDI initiative is design ed to provide them with the space and skills to do this by offering training to the networks which will enable them to evaluate their contribution to women's education and to consider their position within a wider social context.

"By working through well-established networks we are reaching a much wider group of women than we could ever reach if we were working with individual women's groups", explains Maureen Kavanagh, a training development worker with AONTAS who is responsible for the WENDI programme.

"We work with the networks at local, regional and national level and get them to consider their contribution to women's education and to place it within their communities."

One of the problems, Kavanagh says, is that because the groups have been so caught up with "doing", they have rarely stood back and considered what they have achieved or where they fitted within their communities. As a result, some groups have fallen between two stools when it has come to funding and other support as they are neither considered community groups nor adult education groups.

"Women's groups very often lack the type of support provided for other recognised adult education or community development groups and we felt it was important that they should begin to value what they do more, and to look more closely at who they are," Kavanagh continues. "Women's groups have already made a huge contribution to their communities and they have the potential to contribute a lot more. To do this they need to become more strategic in their thinking and to look at where they are going in the future."

A key difference between women's education groups and other adult education groups is that training rarely ends with the completion of one course.

MOST women's groups actively encourage their members to move from being participants to being organisers within their groups which, Maureen Kavanagh says, is an important distinction.

"Attending a course is only one part of women's development," she stresses. "A second strand is membership of the group which is equally important, and then there is the opportunity for the women to continue their personal development through taking on a leadership or management role.

"More often than not, having progressed this far within their own groups many of the women will move into leadership roles within broader community based development groups."

During the lifetime of the WENDI initiative Maureen Kavanagh will devote six training days to each network while networks will also meet regional and national level.

Local training addresses the issues affecting individual networks while regional meetings are designed to take a more macro approach by offering groups the opportunity to comment on key issues such as the Green Paper on Adult Education.

"Feedback about the training has been very positive and I think it's going to benefit the groups enormously in their future plans and development. "Unfortunately the funding for this programme runs out in February, 2000, and I hope some way can be found for it to be continued," Kavanagh says.