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Anne - Marie Williams - Executive Director, National Women's Commission
"This is the cohort that has the least amount of women in terms of - and the least amount of diversity. In other words, this project had no women from Toledo, but in our last cohort, we had 2 women from Toledo, and in the first cohort, we had 7 women from Toledo. So, we've touched a wide cross-section of the country - we've touch all over the country among the 3 cohorts. And to date, we would have trained 98 women for politics at different levels: for village council, town board, city council, and national elections. And we have a few successes to talk about, incrementally of course, because well - as you know - if we were doing this type of work 15 - 20 years ago, we would be way ahead at this time. But from the first cohort, we had 5 women who took part in the village council election, and from that 5, 3 were successful. We have a chairlady, and 2 village councilors. In the second cohort, we had 2 women who took part in conventions at the national level, but they were not successful, and for this cohort, we have 1 woman who won a seat on the Belmopan City Council. So now, that's how we've been going. But the aim is really to raise a critical mass of women for participation at the highest level of politics. We're 50% of the voting population, and no country can adequately develop if you develop half your population, and leave the other half behind. If women are graduating 2 1/2 times to 1 over the male counterpart at the university level, which is our highest level of education at the national university, then where are these women? We are not seeing them so much in our workforce because we have to raise labour force participation rate among women; so where are they? And if they are so smart, then how can we not have them in politics?"

The date for the next Women In Politics programme has not yet been set.