Fight Poverty: Educate Women in Panama

CAPTA Program in Colon - A review of CAPTA Colon 4

 The city of Colón is one of the poorest cities in Panama. Their community is invaded by violence and discrimination, but the colonenses are ready to demonstrate their value, their desire to work and lead to Colon being the logistics and hotel center of the country.

 In 2016 we began the challenge of replicating CAPTA program in Colón and we had the immense support of the United States Embassy as the main collaborator with the project. The Embassy will work with us until 2017 (2 years), and by the end of this year we will have worked with more than 240 women from Colon and impacted their families.

 Each CAPTA group start with a recruitment session, in which a group of psychologists have interviews with every women interested to enter the program. During the 4th CAPTA group the recruitment session included 42 women, of those 30 were chosen to begin the course after the appropriate introduction and interview sessions that included the drug testing and uniform measuring sessions. Of those 30 women:

• Twenty-nine women entered the 5-week Fundamental Cycle.
• Twenty-nine women were benefited from the vocational training held at various hotels in Colon and Panama City.

The fundamental cycle consists of 28 class modules, in which CAPTA women are trained in emotional intelligence, conflict management, English, computer, among other subjects that help them to act as agents of change in the community.

 Vocational Training

Once they had finished the first cycle the girls began the practice as Housekeeper at various hotels in the city of Colon and Panamá, this practice lasted two weeks and they had the opportunity to practice in a real job.

Many of the women had the opportunity to practice in hotels in the city of Panama, and were even hired.

We are now working in create alliances with organizations and people who believe in Colon and help us with different classes and workshops for the CAPTA women, and we believe that there is a prosperous and bright future for Colon City.

CAPTA is a program that reinforces leadership, self-esteem and empowers women to achieve their dreams. During 2015 we had 5 CAPTA groups, each one with different women who had their own struggle and where trying to fight for their family and themselves.

Today, we have more than 850 women graduated, and we are working to replicate the program in different cities in Panama.

Testimonials

Let’s meet Mildonia, she is a woman who graduated from CAPTA program during 2016:

“My name is Mildonia, I am 45 years old and I have four children”.  Mildonia lives in poverty, before starting the program she was dedicated to finding ways to support her family with informal jobs.

She took on the challenge of starting CAPTA and went through a long road of change and improvement. 

“The experience I had in Calicanto as a woman made me change my personality, I learned to make-up myself, and to project myself because I was very shy before”.

“When I graduated from CAPTA, I started as a general assistant in Grupo Rey and a few weeks later the manager promoted me to cashier and I accepted the challenge. I want to continue to grow professionally, and be promoted to office worker. I also want to take English classes. Everything that I learned, helped and the experience I have lived has help me a lot.”

CAPTA program is now growing, as we stared in Colon city this year. We are very excited about it, and we discovered that women in Colon are really different from women in Panama city, but their problems remains the same.  They just need someone who believes in their potential, and give them the opportunity to change.

CAPTA sows in them the seed of change and improvement, which is replicated in their children, in their family and community.

"If you change a woman, you change a family and if you change a family, you change the community".