Women
Afghanaid's programmes attempt to be gender blind while creating equal opportunities for both men and woman. Women specific activities have been developed to increase the access and participation of women within Afghan communities.
Afghanaid are among the few who work directly with thousands of Afghan women living in remote villages.
The Taliban’s repression of Afghan women is well-known.
Life for them has not improved greatly in the new, democratic Afghanistan. Female literacy is 13 per cent (compared to 43 per cent for men) and unemployment thought to be 70 per cent, twice that of their male counterparts.
Afghanaid supports women in building their skills in food processing and in value addition processes of vegetables and fruits grown on the family farm so that their family has food during winter months to eat and to sell the surplus to earn cash income. Similarly, Afghanaid gives training to Afghan women to set up poultry farms as an enterprise and support village women to become vaccinators and community based veterinary workers. Over the last two years, Afghanaid have supported about 2000 village women to set up their saving groups and many of them today run their businesses.
Women are critical members of the community based and local governance institutions which Afghanaid helps communities to establish. Afghanaid has built leadership and organisational skills and competencies of thousands of women to run their grassroots institutions effectively.
Helping women to set themselves up in business
Afghanaid’s women’s projects started in 1983 with literacy and skills training programmes aimed at women who had been denied a basic education.
Almost 13,000 women receive basic lessons in literacy, maths and health education every year as well as vocational training such as carpet weaving, embroidery and tailoring. Six hundred self-help group members have received business skills training and more than 5,000 women have received loans to set up small homebased businesses.
Since June 2007 Habiba has been training 20 girls in embroidery, health education and basic literacy in Dahane Tasarqi village in Ghor province. The girls range in age from 12 to 20.
Dahane Tasarqi is a conservative community which forbids girls to go outside the village walls – none are allowed to attend school. Afghanaid provides books, a blackboard, sewing and embroidery material and sewing machines. The girls receive practical advice on starting their own business. Those in Habiba’s embroidery group are busy making plans. Shafiqa, 15, said, ‘We already sew clothes for our brothers and others in our family, so why shouldn’t we make some money from our skill?
A gift of £100 would provide materials and tools to set up a business.
Women Public Call Office
Afghanaid has initiated a women public call office project in collaboration with Roshan ( a local telecom company). Afghanaid provides a Public Call Office on credit with easy monthly installments. To boost up their business, Afghanaid provides technical support and business advice to these women.
This small scale project has so far benefitted 50 women directly while 5000 women have indirectly benefitted from this project.