The Islamic Careline Ladies Lifeskills Program: An Empowerment Initiative

The Islamic Careline established a Ladies Lifeskills program in response to a shared view by clients, volunteers and management at the Careline that females within the community were experiencing feelings of disempowerment and low self esteem. In practice, the program consisted of a series of ten sessions, aimed at empowering women by building self-worth and improving their quality of life via the transmission of knowledge on core life skills. This study was commissioned to assess the appropriateness and efficacy of the Lifeskills programme. Working within a qualitative paradigm, interviews were conducted with 10 participants who completed the programme using a semi-structured interview schedule developed by the researcher. The schedule was developed based on a review of all the material (course notes, overheads, exercises) associated with the program as well as previous evaluations of the program completed by participants. Results indicated that while the content of the course was useful and informative, it was not always easy to transfer the content into practice. Furthermore it was evident that the program was effective in terms of meeting lower order needs as defined by Maslow (1987) but needed to be revised for higher order needs.