Victoria Emma Naoxas – Namibia

I am an entrepreneur from Arandis; I own a cleaning company. I broke into the business world to create such a business on my own. I have 127 employees, 92 of whom are female. I employ women, because they are a disadvantaged group and I strive to give them a chance to earn a decent living. The salaries that I give my employees can be classified as satisfactory, as I want to give people a life were being under-payed should not be an issue. I also employ more women than men because I would like to empower women economically and make them more economically independent. Such a move has been necessitated by the ideas that came out of meetings and workshops that have been held by Gender Links.

I have been among the participants in training workshops held by the Arandis Town Council which is part the Gender Links Governance Centres of Excellence process. I have attended GL workshops on women’s empowerment and how it could help solve the economic problems they have. I received knowledge and skills on women’s rights and leadership that have helped carry forward my work as a female entrepreneur.

I am very proud of Gender Links. They don’t exclude certain people from being part of their programmes. I think Gender Links should go out more to the rural communities, which is especially where people do not really know their rights and are still very ill informed. Here they should benefit from training, especially centered around gender based violence and knowledge on gender balance in the community and in the homes they live in. Besides Gender Links workshops I have also been part of SME compete, where I received mentoring and training on how to lead my company. This indicates how the work of civil society organisations can help to impact positively and elevate the lives of women in today’s society.