IWE-
Iraqi Women's Engagement, or something like that. I hear it's usually our Corpsmen (male n female Navy medical attached to us, seeing as how the Marine Corps doesnt have those MOS's - jobs) providing medical help mostly geared towards the women and children in the towns/villages, with female marines volunteering for helping with stuff like searching,
but mostly there to interact with the people that show up... naturally the women feel more comfortable with us there.
The grunts that actually go off base probably don't come off as friendly teddy bears, well at least not at first, til u get to know them. Part of the culture/ what they're used to creates some difficulties as well, but even in any case it helps to be able to talk to another woman, so it's good that we can be around for them.
I'm more than happy to volunteer if they appreciate it as much as everyone tells me they do.
I mean I'm even contemplating leaving my nice safe (relatively) base so i can help out with stuff like that if needed, when I'm not keeping busy on my regular job.

The Lioness program (more female marines), if you're interested, are the ones that do the more aggressive searching,
they're all volunteers as well, from whatever their normal job is, to go help out with the searching whenever one of the infantry units requests them, for times when they could use female searchers. I don't know how they feel about it, but I would rather be searched by another woman if i had the choice. So I'm glad that there is the option, and that both of these programs or setups are getting such a positive response from both sides- the volunteers, and the Iraqi patients and community.

Here's a link to some news article about one of the 'Engagements'.
[link]