In a country where girls are rarely allowed to attend school, World Food Programme‘s assistance serves as a powerful incentive for male family members to send the women – mothers and adolescent girls – of their family to vocational skills and literacy classes.
In eight different training centers in several remote villages of Shakardara district of Kabul province, around 500 illiterate women are attending classes daily to learn vocational skills and how to read and write.
Feroza, who is 16 years old, is the youngest trainee at one of these centers. Since her father did not allow her to go to school in the traditional sense, Feroza never imagined that one day there would be a class in her village that her father would allow her to attend. “I am not allowed to go to school, my father will not let any of my sisters to attend school because none of the older girls in our village went to school,” said Feroza.
Her dreams of becoming literate came true when she got her father’s permission to attend WFP-supported vocational skills training and literacy classes in her village. For the first time Feroza was able to write her name and read signs. “No one will understand how happy I am to be able to write my name and read signboards along my way,” she added.
WFP, with its implementing partner Afghanistan Blind Management, supports these vocational skill training centers and literacy classes by providing a monthly food ration composed of wheat, pulses, enriched vegetable oil and iodized salt to the trainees for a period of three months.
Twenty-three year old Tahira Habibi is another trainee of the same vocational skills and literacy class. She see these classes as the only chance for herself, other women and adolescent girls in her village to learn income-generating skills and how to read and write.
“We are really under pressure from our brothers, fathers, uncles and the other male members of our families. They are not ready to let us go to school. These WFP-supported classes are our only chance of going somewhere to learn something,” Tahira said.
According to Tahira, WFP’s food ration is very helpful because it encourages parents and husbands to allow their daughters and wives attend the classes.
In addition to this project, WFP supports two similar projects in two other districts of Kabul, in Chahar Asyab and in Dehsabz, where more than one thousand women and young girls are learning beading skills and how to be literate.
In 2015, WFP plans to provide vocational skills training to nearly 30,000 people – with women comprising more than two thirds of the trainees – in 58 districts of 20 provinces through its food and voucher distribution.