A series of free online election workshops from See Her Elected aimed at women in rural Ireland will help equip with the necessary skills and knowledge in preparation for the local elections 2024.
A new series of election workshops will begin from January 23-26 inclusive and participants are asked to pick a time and day that best suits their schedule.
The award-winning Government funded programme to support women in rural constituencies to become county councillors has gone from strength to strength with over 500 women throughout Ireland signing up for free online workshops, events and resources over the past year. Continuing that success, See Her Elected’s Election workshops will take you from being able to articulate why you should run, right through to the election count and beyond.
All workhops are free and they run on a monthly basis on four different days of the week and at four different times to best fit in with day-to-day life. Workshops are open to all women throughout rural Ireland.
The Election Workshops begin on January 23rd, 2023 and are for any woman who is considering running for local election in 2024 or indeed any woman who wants to become part of a campaign team to help another woman to get elected. This course examines key issues at a very practical level such as building your profile; analytical work on voting patterns in your local electoral area; whether you should run for a party or Independent as well as solid information from experienced campaign managers about the exact kind of people you ideally should have on a campaign team
Other modules examine the nuts and bolts of election campaign, canvassing and communications strategies with topics such as Press Releases, Public Speaking and Being on the Radio, Building Blocks of your Social Media Strategy, Paid Promotion as part of your Communications Strategy and Photography & Videography.
Through the SHESchool model See Her Elected provides free online community education to women in their homes, and a clear pathway for women taking them from learning about local government through every practicality of running for local office.
“By the end of the Election Workshops every women participating will: be clear for themselves and be able to articulate to others, why they are running for election, why they would be a campaign manager or team member; know how to powerfully and clearly state the issues they, or their candidate, is running on; understand what it means to be a County Councillor and the difference women can make; have assessed their own electoral area, from the perspective of a candidate or a campaign manager to understand what happened at the last local election, the opportunities and barriers to winning a seat, and understand what a campaign might look like. They will also have an in-depth knowledge of developing a canvassing and campaign strategy as well as a clear communications strategy,” Project Manager with See Her Elected, Dr Michelle Maher, stated.
Currently women hold almost 26%, or 244 council seats, while the remainder, 705 are held by men. The 2019 local elections reveal a notable urban-rural divide in the likelihood of women being selected and elected for the council. Women accounted for 35 per cent of candidates contesting for seats in urban areas but just 23 per cent of candidates in more rural areas, according to research by the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI ).
The innovation nature of SHE was recognised by juries across Europe judging the project as the winner of the prestigious Innovation in Politics Award (Democracy category ) in December 2021.
See Her Elected is a grassroots organisation built on the ethos of women learning and supporting each other with a specific focus on rural Ireland. SHE is a collaboration between Longford Women’s Link and 5050North West and the programme is funded by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
Contact Dr Michelle Maher at info@seeherelected or log onto www.seeherelected.ie to find out more and to register to join the FREE online Election Workshops.
