50 Women Graduate from Literacy and Livelihood Skills Training at Parwan AWC

This June, 50 newly literate, newly skilled Afghan women completed a one-year training course at the Parwan AWC. Upon successful completion of training, each woman received a microfinance loan to start her own business. The article below appears on the website of the Afghanistan Women's Council (www.afghanistanwomencouncil.org).

Graduation Ceremony in Parwan Province for 50 Trainees

   

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

AWC held a one day graduation ceremony on 27th June in which 50 trainees from Parwan province completed one year course and received their certificates. The people who participated in the ceremony were from Governmental and non-governmental organizations, Kabul University, Media, NATO and Embassies. The program started at 9:00 AM and finished at 2:00 PM.

 

 

Dreaming in Afghanistan

The women and girls of Parwan at the AWC training course.
Mrs. Shukria, the Director, is in the front in the black head scarf.
My friend, Louise Edgerton, is at the far left.

Mahmoda wants to be a tailor. Zakia wants to open a flower nursery. Sema jan wants to open a butcher stghop. Maryam wants to teach children. Zarmina, Mahtab, and Marina want to start their own literacy courses.

Such are the dreams of the women at the Parwan AWC who are newly literate and recently embarked on livelihood skills training.  Next July, each of the 10 women in training now will receive a microfinance loan of 6,000 Afs, about $130 USD. 

With their microfinance loans, these women from Parwan will open tailoring shops in their homes, a butcher shop in the bazaar, a flower nursery on the hillside. 

The 10 women who began the literacy course on April 24, 2010 -- thanks to the generosity of 50 dear friends and family members -- are not the same women who knocked on Mrs. Shukria's door that April afternoon. They arrived illiterate, untrained, reticent to show their faces in the presence of strangers. 

In four short months, each of these women -- Mahmoda, Zakia, Zarmina, Mahtab gul, Sema jan, Main gul, Soraya, Shah khanam, Maryam, and Marina -- has mastered the Dari alphabet, learned to write her name, and is reading at a primary level. You can't imagine the joy this brings to their faces.

No longer covering their faces when a man enters the room, these wonderful women are the proud owners of self-confidence, and it shows in their every move. Every day, the women take enormous forward strides. They dream of starting their own businesses and of what they can do for their families with their earned income. What I don't think they have yet begun to dream about is the model they are presenting to their young children.  Working mothers are hardly a stereotype in Afghanistan, particularly in the rural provinces. 

I believe women and girls hold the future of Afghanistan in their capable hands. I see this every time a clutch of Afghan school girls passes on the streets, standing tall in their black pant suits and white headscarves. I see this in my friend, Humaira, who is standing for a seat in Parliament this September. I see it in my colleagues who hold their own in our media production department and go home at 4:00 PM to raise the next generation. It all starts with literacy, confidence, and hope.

The Parwan Afghan Women's Council

The disintegration of families and communities over the past three decades of conflict has resulted in extreme poverty and isolation for many thousands of Afghan women.  War, drought, and illness have left many women widowed - struggling to provide for their families without adequate education or training.  Combined with the repressive restrictions on women in society, many widows, forced to assume the responsibility of heads of households, have been unable to undertake even the most basic tasks such as going to the market or selling their goods.  Religious restrictions have confined many women to their homes and, without husbands or male relatives, they are often left to starve or beg on the streets. Providing women with the skills and resources to gain control over income and earning is crucial to rebuilding the social and economic fabric of Afghanistan.  Afghanistan Women’s Council Mission Statement  (www.afghanistanwomencouncil.org)

The Afghan Women’s Council is a non-governmental, non-political, non-profit, non-sectarian charity organization founded in Peshawar, Pakistan in 1986 to support Afghan refugee women.  AWC empowers Afghan women by building their capacity, improving their health, education and living conditions and strengthening their socio-economic status. AWC moved its operations to Afghanistan in 1992 and now has provincial offices in four provinces with plans to expand to four more provinces in the next two years. Since its inception, the AWC has trained 8,000 women and provided them with microfinance loans to establish their own businesses. Every week, 40 more women receive microfinance loans.

The AWC trains illiterate, unskilled, isolated women and girls to read and write and to learn a livelihood skill like tailoring, sewing, beekeeping, jam and pickle-making, and carpet weaving. For the first three months of the AWC training course, the widows and girls learn to read and write. In the fourth month, the women add a job skills training course to their literacy studies. At the end of the one-year course, the women graduate from the AWC training, and each woman receives a loan of 6,000 Afs ($130 USD) to start her own business.

The Parwan AWC opened its doors in June 2008 and in June 2009, graduated 50 Afghan women from its first training class. The second training class of 50 women graduated on June 27, 2010 (www.afghanistanwomencouncil.org/news.htm). 100% of the women who have graduated from the Parwan AWC one-year training course have repaid their loans and many have received a second loan.

In Parwan province, men are unlikely to allow their wives and daughters to leave home, to attend school, or to embark on a business. It is an enormous achievement that the Parwan AWC has enabled 100 women to date to achieve literacy, acquire a skill, and start a small business.  The AWC first works with the men in the lives of the women and girls in their training courses to show them that the AWC is a safe place where the women and girls are well taken care of and that nothing subversive or against Islam goes on there.  Men are invited to inspect the Center and observe classes to ensure that they are comfortable allowing their wives and daughters to attend.  If the men will not come to the Center, the AWC asks local community and religious leaders to intervene with the husbands/fathers to secure their permission for their wives/daughters to come to the Center.

The women who attend classes at the Parwan AWC are nurtured and supported from their first day at the AWC through their post-graduate period. The AWC provides each woman $20/month for transportation to and from the Center while they are attending classes. Most of the women live in remote villages in the foothills surrounding Parwan. If a woman becomes sick, the Center finds medical care for her. (Many Afghan men believe women should not receive medical attention and refuse their wives and daughters medical care.) The Center provides the women with warm clothing in winter. And they provide an educational facility where children are educated, readied for school, and cared for every day by a staff of three dedicated teachers while their mothers attend classes.  The AWC stays in touch with the women after they graduate.

There is a proven link between the empowerment of women and the strengthening of civil society. An income-generating woman invests 90% of her income in her family. That investment, in turn, feeds and educates girls and boys, increases the family’s standard of living, and promotes gender equality within marriages.

Ten Afghan Achievers

On July 27, I visited the Parwan AWC training class at the invitation of the 10 Afghan women in training. They wanted me to be with them as they kicked off their handcrafts training. 

After 3 months of literacy training -- which will continue for all 12 months of the training -- all of these remarkable Afghan women, each of whom arrived on the first day of training illiterate and unskilled, is reading and writing and conjugating verbs. This is nothing short of miraculous!

Manisha and the Handcrafts Teacher, Parwan AWC, July 27, 2010.

Mrs. Shukria, Director of the Parwan AWC, distributes pieces of cloth to handcrafts students.

Mato and Manisha and their Handcrafts and Literacy Teachers, Parwan AWC, July 27, 2010.

Afghan Women, Afghan Sisters

All of my province is full of Talibs. Two days ago, two brothers were killed because the Taliban said they worked with the government. One had two children and the other left a pregnant wife. No one can talk, and all men must wear beards. I see the cows can go out, but I am a girl and cannot go out. If I go out, Talibs will kill me, and no one will ask why.    Anonymous contributor to the Afghan Women’s Writing Project (www.awwproject.org)

During the past 30 years of conflict in Afghanistan, women and girls have suffered disproportionately. Many have lost fathers, husbands, brothers. Families, households, and livelihoods have been uprooted by the disapora caused by the 1978 Soviet invasion. When civil conflict erupted at the hands of the mujahedeen in 1992, the rights of women were severely restricted. And with the Taliban takeover in 1996, women were marginalized to an extent never before experienced, confined to home except with a mahram/chaperone, denied education, brutalized for showing their faces in public.

Women’s rights are guaranteed in the Constitution of Afghanistan, in Islamic law, and in international treaties acceded to by the Government of Afghanistan, yet there is a enormous breach between policy and practice.  In 2010, Afghan women are still forced into marriage to settle disputes between families or tribes, married off as children, denied their rights to education, health care, employment, and inheritance. Afghan women are subject to physical, sexual, and psychological violence as a matter of custom and tradition.

The literacy rate for Afghan women in urban areas is 12.6%, and 10% in rural areas. Nearly 43% of Afghan women are under 18 when they marry. The Shiite Personal Status Law requires women to submit to their husbands’ demands for intercourse, to apply makeup upon command, and to request permission from their husbands and fathers before leaving home. Under this law, husbands are permitted “temporary marriages,” allowing them to seek the company of prostitutes when they are away from home.

In the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, Afghan women have not abandoned hope. Thanks to a rising Afghan civil society movement with many organizations on the ground dedicated to promoting the rights of Afghan women, hope prevails. For each of the risk factors mentioned earlier – forced marriage, widowhood, illiteracy, restricted movement – there is a remedy. When Afghan women become literate and acquire a livelihood skill, the family is strengthened, the household income increases, children are better nourished and sent to school, and women gain the confidence that leads to gender balance in their homes. Domestic violence decreases.

In my work with the Parwan Afghan Women’s Council and my visits to Rabia Balkhi Girls’ High School (Kabul’s most sought-after girls’ school, with an enrollment of 3,000) I have seen the light in the eyes of Afghan women and girls when they are met with the possibility of learning and growing and providing. These women and girls are the agents of change. All they need are the tools -- literacy, livelihood skills and confidence -- to lead their beloved country into the future.

 Sima, Iyengal, and Soraya welcome the new sewing machines
and the kick-off of the Parwan AWC livelihood skills training course. July 27, 2010
Char-i-kar, Parwan province, Afghanistan