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.