Empowering girls and women in Afghanistan
Thursday, 20 April 2006
Empowering girls and women in Afghanistan
In October 2005, Concern Afghanistan began funding a number of projects facilitated by a local NGO, the Rabi-Balkhi Rehabilitation and Skill-building Agency (RASA). These projects are targeted at extremely poor girls and women, most of whom are orphans, widows, divorced, or disabled, and include embroidery, tailoring, literacy classes, and hygiene training. The overall aim of these projects is to make these women more independent by generating their own income and reducing their isolation from society, namely as a result of their illiteracy and devastating family circumstances.
In the tailoring and embroidery classes, women aged 15 to 24 get the chance to learn new skills and generate a small income for themselves. If they did not participate in the classes, they would be confined to housework as they have never been able to go to school. The women enjoy the classes very much as it gives them the opportunity to learn new skills they would otherwise never be exposed to, and it allows them to make friends and have a social life.
In the embroidery class, women are learning to embroider cushions. The girls work in two group of five, each group embroider one side of the cushion, and once it is complete they will sell it to people who come to the centre. One large cushion costs 200 Afghanis (approximately $4) to make, and the centre sell the cushions for 500 Afghanis each (approximately $10). The profit made is spent on buying more materials and paying a small income to the girls themselves. As there are few culturally permitted jobs for women in Afghanistan, this small income gives them greater independence and the opportunity to buy the things they need.
In the tailoring class, women learn how to make dresses or Kameez’s (Traditional Afghan dress which goes down to their knees). First they make miniature models of the dresses (as shown in the above picture) and once they have mastered the basic skills, they can work on bigger pieces. Concern has provided some sewing machines for the women to use and also pays the tailoring teacher’s salary. Concern provides material and cloth for training purposes. The women generate then income by producing other women’s clothing and then are able to buy their own cloth from the market and produce the desired design. After the training, the women are encouraged to start their own business and generate more income for themselves.
Finally, the project runs a self-help affinity group (SAG) which is also supported by Concern. The SAG teaches women literacy and hygiene education, but also acts as a ‘savings group’, where all of the women contribute a minimum amount of money each month. The money is kept in a safe place and will be used to help one of the members out if there is a crisis, or act as a loan to a woman who wants to set up her own enterprise, thus encouraging women’s independence.
The group is full of women of all ages desperately excited to learn how to read and write. Many of the women in the class have been studying for seven months and can now read and write to a satisfactory standard. None of these women have had access to any form of education for at least the last 25 years; this project allows them to come together and learn in order to improve their lives. Many of the girls in this class come to get their literacy to a high enough standard, in order to then enter the appropriate grade at school in the future. One woman, Guljan, is 45 and this project is the first opportunity in her lifetime to read and write.
The head of RASA, Fazila, has great aspirations for these incredible women and would love to see them gain more and more independence through skill-building. She would particularly like to see these underprivileged women learn how to use computers and to speak English, as she believes it would give them a much deserved ‘leg-up’ in the society which they are currently ostracised from.
