Ms Eileen Weir:

We are not men haters. If a woman is educated, her children and husband will be better educated. It goes right through. We have had grandparents, parents, children and infants all coming through because they see that when they go into a community-based education programme, people actually have time for them. Education has let a lot of people down in the North, but if people struggle, we bring them in and tell them to give it a go. If they are struggling, we ask them to let us know and we put a support workers with them to help. You will not get that in BIFE or in universities or anywhere else. We open that gate for our women to get into universities. Many of our women go to university after coming into our centres to build their confidence and to get their open college network qualifications or Open University courses. A few woman came through our programmes together. They were moved about. They did some stuff with me and with Ms McCrory. They have now come out of university with their community development degree. We do not simply look after women in the sense of them coming in for a cup of tea and having a yarn. They come in and we fulfil their lives. They then come back from university and go back into the community to volunteer as well as working.

Last week, I did a survey with a lot of the woman with whom I have worked. While this is only an approximation, there were 2,400 unpaid voluntary hours worked in one year, which are additional to any funding we get, in my own single project. That is from women who have come through and have seen the need and struggles we are having at grassroots level. The grassroots level is forgotten about, even within the women's movement sometimes. Although I support the women's movement 100%, when it comes to grassroots issues, some of them do not get it.