Email: [email protected]

Frequently asked questions

• How much do the courses cost?

Women Making a Difference understand that women face numerous barriers to participation in public and political life. When applying for funding we ensure that course costs are included and thus there is no charge to any woman who would like to attend. However, if your company is considering inviting WMAD into your organisation then we can provide you with a bespoke training plan and quotation.

• Who can take part?

We operate our recruitment on a self-selection basis. If a woman has identified that she feels the training would benefit her, then she is free to come along and gain from the learning we offer.

Please note that due to certain funding restrictions, there may be particular courses where limitations are set, for example many youth programmes are limited to participants between the ages of 18-25.

• Is it women only?

The WMAD project was founded on the fact that there are fewer women decision-makers than men. Therefore our training is aimed at women only, but we are very interested in engaging men in the equality debate and would encourage them to sign up to our newsletter.

• Is the training only in Cardiff?

No, at present we run training across South and West Wales, we have run training courses in North Wales and at present are looking for both tutors and project partners to enable us to re-establish a North Wales presence.

• I have young children and need assistance with childcare, can you help?

We do have a limited amount of funding to support women with childcare costs to enable them to participate in our courses. We organise crèche facilities where possible and are also able to contribute to the cost of childcare with a registered provider. Requests are processed on a needs assessed basis where our funding allows.

• I am in receipt of benefits; can you help with my travel expenses?

Women Making a Difference understand that women face numerous barriers to participation in public and political life. We run our courses within local communities in order to limit the time and cost of travel. Individual requests for travel support are processed on a needs assessed basis and we will only cover public transport costs, unless there is a disability requirement.

• I am disabled; will you be able to support me to attend a course?

We ensure that all of our funding bids address the issue of disabled access and ensure that we have funds available to support participants with a range of needs including printing materials in large font, supporting travel and carer costs, as well as assessing all of our training venues to ensure that they are fully accessible.

• When does the next course start?

We run courses in conjunction with a range of community organisations and if we have a group of interested women will do our best to put an Engendering Change course in place. Our WiPL and WiM courses are run on an annual basis in South and West Wales, and we hold a range of other courses throughout the year. You can view the current courses on offer here or sign up to our newsletter to receive regular email alerts.

• Can I take part in level 2 courses without doing level 1?

We do prefer participants to have completed stage 1 of our programme, Women for a Change, before continuing on in their learning journey. This course gives a great grounding in the subjects we teach, including community action planning, the decision-making processes of government and confidence building. We find that participants gain more from the programme when they have this knowledge to build on. However you do not need to have completed this course to do Women in Community Leadership etc, as we understand that many women may already be at the point where they want to start from level 2 onwards.

• I've heard about the Active Citizens course, is it running again?

We have successfully run the Active Citizens course in partnership with the British Council for four years, training over 120 women in the principles of being "globally connected and locally engaged" to our communities. WMAD undertake a competitive application process in order to be selected as a partner. We are awaiting notice of the opening of the application process for 2014/15 and will have further information later in the year on if we will be running the programme again.