Women’s City: An Integrated Model to Promote Women’s Empowerment
The Integrated Services for Women’s Empowerment Program (SIEM for its initials in Spanish) consists of a model that integrates, in the same physical space, specialized and free services provided by multiple public institutions related to sexual and reproductive health, economic empowerment, violence against women prevention and education on women's rights. To facilitate the visits for the users, the Women’s City Centers, which are part of the SIEM model, also provide child care services.
This innovative approach has the potential to reduce the economic cost of these services for the beneficiaries and provide personalized attention to address the needs of each user, which fosters effective inter-institutional coordination and better quality of the services offered. Each center treats an average of 275 women daily, and each woman uses 2 to 3 services per visit.
With financing and technical assistance from the IDB, El Salvador was the first country to launch the model. Its implementation was accompanied by a short-term impact evaluation which indicated that, after one year of operation of the program, its users used in average 43% more public services related to the areas of sexual and reproductive health, economic empowerment and violence against the woman, than the women who did not visit the centers.
The model has been adapted to the realities and needs of several countries in the region:
Name of the centers: Ciudad Mujer
Start date: 2011
Executing entity: The Secretariat of Social Inclusion
Number of centers in operation: 6
Location: Municipalities of Colón, Usulután, Santa Ana, San Martín, San Miguel and El Divisadero
Modules: Sexual and reproductive health, services for survivors of violence against women, economic autonomy, territorial and knowledge management and child care
Name of the centers: Ciudad de las Mujeres
Start date: 2015
Executing entity: The Secretariat of Social Development
Number of centers in operation: 1
Location: Municipality of Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero
Modules: Sexual and reproductive health, job training and business development, services for survivors of violence against women, collective education and childcare
Name of the centers: Ciudad Mujer
Start date: 2017
Executing entity: General Government Coordination Secretariat
Number of centers in operation: 2*
Location: Municipality of Tegucigalpa and Choloma*
Modules: Sexual and reproductive health, economic autonomy, services for survivors of violence against women, services for adolescent women, collective education and childcare
* Three centers will be inaugurated in the municipalities of San Pedro Sula, Juticalpa and La Ceiba.
Name of the centers: Ciudad Mujer - Ñande Kerayvoty Renda*
Start date: 2018
Executing entity: The Ministry of Women and the Social Cabinet of the Presidency
Number of centers in operation: 1
Location: Villa Elisa, Central Department
Modules: Services for survivors of violence against women, sexual and reproductive health, economic empowerment, education for equality and childcare
*Ñande Kerayvoty Renda means “the place of our dreams” in Guaraní. Ciudad Mujer in Paraguay provides bilingual attention in Spanish and Guaraní.
Two centers are in the design stage to operate in Greater Santo Domingo and Santiago. The program is led by the Cabinet for the Coordination of Social Policies of the Dominican Republic.
The project is in the design stage. The execution of the program is carried out in coordination with the Kanata Metropolitan Council, Cochabamba.
Toolkit
Together with the PLENUS Foundation, we developed a series of free and public tools—in the areas of diagnosis, design and implementation—with the aim of consolidating and standardizing the model as a regional public good, facilitating the technical assistance provided by the IDB, ensuring the quality in the design of the program and responding to the growing demand in the region.
