Today the Department of Women’s Affairs building on Albert Street looked more like a beauty care salon with both pedicures and manicures being given to both the young and old for a foot bottom price of ten dollars each. It was all about the final day in a six month long training for single mothers who now have not only successfully finished the programme but will also be employed by various establishments across the country. Today 7News spoke with the programme’s job placement officer Elisa Castellanos plus got a glimpse of some of the women prettying up for the long Easter holiday weekend.
Elisa Castellanos, Women’s Department
“We’re coming to the end of the project cycle one where we had a total of 70 women enrolled. And so what we’re doing now, today is actually the cosmetology class participants of that project, we held a little pre-Easter special, offering our partner agencies to come in and get manicures and pedicures at $10 each and this way we get the women to have a little incentive, the money, the $10, and then of course get the practice on not only the techniclaiteis of doing the nails but also dealing with customers and doing with different types of customers and so that was the objective of this promotion.
This is a promise from the manifesto so it is a government promise in the manifesto to increase support for single mothers and so that’s how the project came about and cosmetology isn’t the only field of training that we are offering. We are doing housekeeping, child care services, and also sewing. And at the end, one special component of this project is the job placement so we’re currently looking, we’ve been looking for the past three or four months for employers for the women in this project and then there are still places available so we are asking the public, if there is anybody out there who needs a housekeeper, a babysitter, or a cosmetologist or somebody to sew, a sewing partner, or somebody to sew something for them then the project does have what we call a referral database where all the names of the participants are entered after they complete the project.”
So if you are interested in employing any of the women who have been trained in any of the specialized areas mention you can contact the Department of Women’s Affairs and get whatever information they want. The second cycle of the programme starts in May for another set of single mothers to be trained and once completed their names too will go into the database for job placement.
