Women’s Empowerment Projects with Education in Agriculture, Literacy and Life Skills
The aim of this project is to engage vulnerable women to take part in literacy programs to support life skills and vocational training so that women will have more options for livelihoods to contribute to their families income. The life skills training is an added component to the literacy courses and it taught in parallel to standards set by the Afghan Ministry of Education. The courses includes basic literacy, post literacy, women rights in Islam, personal health, hygiene and nutrition, importance of forest, pollution and its consequences, domestic waste management, environment degradation and basic mathematics.
Read the success story about our Women’s Empowerment Projects
“My name is Amina and I live in Layabah village of Yaftal district. I am married and I have 6 children and we are a poor family. First I borrowed money from the Self Help group that they had saved jointly ; and I started producing Bulany ( a kind of traditional food), then I returned the money back with the agreed interest to the group. Now I am doing this business separately with the half profit of the lent money. The money which I earn from this business covers my household and children’s expenses. We didn’t have other difficulties, the only thing was the lack of opportunity in the society, we couldn’t attends schools or do any business, but now when NAC and other organizations came to the village and showed us the way of living, encouraged us to study, do business and so on.
I have learnt how to save money. After the establishment of the SHG in the village we collected money twice a month, and we saved about 50,000 Afs in 6 months. From the past I used to sell eggs but I didn’t save any money. I spent it all at home or gave it to the children, but now I am saving my money and doing business afterwards. If I make more money I plan to open a bakery where I can create jobs to other people by hiring assistants and produce cookies, Bulany, bread and other similar products. Before we felt like blinds because we could not read and write, but thanks to NAC we feel more confident and independent. At the same time, we would appreciate if the duration of the project was longer as we would like to improve even more. We are really grateful to NAC that in these two years NAC did a lot in our village in all sectors like education, agriculture, and civil society.
Vocational Training
Practical non-agricultural skills enable people to generate incomes independently of natural resource problems and climatic seasons. Therefore, the NAC aims at offering people who are highly vulnerable to the forces of nature a second skill for sustainable alternative livelihoods, especially during the long winter months. In order to identify the market needs in the target districts, the NAC conducted a thorough market analysis on the availability of essential skills and services. According to the identified market needs, training in embroidery, tailoring, weaving, carpentry, mobile phone repairing and car mechanics are being held with our beneficiaries.
Read the below success story about our Mobile phone repairing Training
“My name is Sayeed Jafar. I am 25 years old. When I was in 10th grade at School, my father died and I was obliged to leave school and support my family, because I was the only young man to support the family with 15 members. I left my family and went to Helmand province near to my uncle and worked as labor with him for many years.
Last year when I came back in my village, one of the Community Development Council (CDC) members informed me from Repairing Mobile Phone Mechanic Program of NAC. As I was tired of being far from my family and unskilled labor, therefore I requested from CDC members in my village to nominate me for this program. Fortunately I selected and then went to Jaghori district for four months. During these four months besides learning of repairing mobile phone mechanic, I followed up some English and Computer courses also.
Now I have my own workshop with good income. Besides working as mobile phone mechanic, I have Photoshop services also here. You can see my shop with enough income and I can feed my family, and my
average daily income is about 1000 Afs. Also I am quite happy that I am here near to my family, and the most important thing is that I can solve my people problems. I am very happy that I have a sustainable job near to my family with enough income. Many thanks NAC.”
