Tailoring: A Small Business Skill for Afghan Women

Afghanistan has been stunned by recent developments and people are adapting as best they can, to a new situation which remains both unclear and uncertain as to the future.  AIL’s current priority is to provide urgently needed assistance to the thousands of displaced families who have flooded into Kabul and Herat. Some centers provide a staging point for aid. Our staff are all working, though offices currently are men only with women working from home. The centers are all female and await instructions from the Taliban with regard to procedures required for reopening centers to our students. We are optimistic these classes will start again very soon. A woman with skills is a woman who contributes to her family financially, which makes life better for everyone in the family. Tailoring is a skill a woman can use from the home, and doesn’t require her to be alone with strangers.  Our clinics have expanded their capacity to cope with the large numbers of refugees that are in the area.

The Yacoobi private schools are open and operating under the rules that have been given such as dividing male and female. It is exam season and students are studying hard and sitting their exams as usual. It is a great credit to them and their teachers as everyone has heightened levels of fear, stress and anxiety. The private TV and Radio Meraj are not broadcasting but awaiting instructions in how to recommence and staff are creating content and archiving materials for broadcast at a later date.

We have been touched by the outreach of support and outpouring of donations to help the Afghan people. We thank you for standing by Afghanistan as it faces another humanitarian crisis on top of Covid-19 and drought.  

Update on tailoring classes

In the first half of 2021, there were 1,634 students studying various needle craft skills including, tailoring, weaving, nut weaving, crochet and embroidery.  Graduates of these courses go on to form home businesses as well as sewing for family and friends or gain jobs in the sewing sector. This is often the first class a woman takes at a center and her success leads her to believe in her abilities so she goes on to take up literacy, Arabic and math classes too. 

Your support makes all the difference! Thank you.

AIL provides training in  human rights, women’s rights, leadership, peace, democracy, good citizenship and other capacity building topics. AIL’s leadership training takes place in two ways.  AIL holds in-depth leadership workshops and also integrates the teaching of leadership into every workshop and every class in AIL centers. So far in 2021, 122 people have attended Leadership Workshops.  AIL also supports a special 2 year leadership course for 30 students at the Yacoobi high schools. Leadership workshops include topics such as what makes a good leader, management, listening skills, self- confidence, public- speaking, building good relationships, politics, democracy and peace.

In the centers, leadership concepts are taught by teachers who have taken the AIL leadership workshops. In part, AIL’s Leadership training seeks to help participants understand that anyone can be a leader and to enhance the participants’ ability to take a variety of leadership roles in their community.

Based on feedback from participants, AIL has long known that its leadership training have resulted in the participants taking leadership roles that were new to them following the workshop.  Leadership training is transformative.  If there are female leaders in society, the violence decreases dramatically, because women can solve problems without using weapons and violence. The students in classes, such as tailoring, gain leadership skills along with following their tailoring class curriculum which means for example, tailoring students feel empowered to set up their own home business or become tailoring teachers.

Your support makes all the difference! Thank you.

Covid-19: AIL continues with its relief efforts providing food aid, PPE and running a Covid-19 hospital. All health clinics are operating and Learning Centers and schools are holding classes. Radio Meraj continues to broadcast the latest Covid-19 information.