Women who work in the non-profit sector on Prince Edward Island are being offered an opportunity to improve their leadership skills.

The Torch Program is a new women's leadership program that will be offered this fall by Women's Network P.E.I.

Michelle MacCallum is the executive director and she says the 15-week program is designed to give women the skills they need to move into leadership roles.

"What we've noticed over our decades of work, people who are really good at working in not-for-profits come with a certain set of skills but sometimes lack the ability to develop all the things that people need to do to be in management positions at not-for-profits," she said. "I'm talking specifically about things like financial management, the ability to write grants and proposals, build relationships with funders."

MacCallum says women hold three-quarters of the jobs with non-profits on P.E.I, working in challenging environments, with insecure funding and difficulties finding and keeping good employees.

"Not-for-profits sometimes are in the news for not great reasons, where they've run into difficulty particularly around financial management or management of HR issues"

"I think this is going to increase the capacity of organizations on P.E.I., to be able to handle those challenges and those situations."

Women's Network received $24,000 from the province's Interministerial Women's Secretariat to offer the program this fall for free.

MacCallum says she already has a dozen applications, even though the program was just announced.