Tailoring: A Small Business Skill for Afghan Women

During 2008 the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) trained 2153 women in sewing and tailoring class in AIL Learning Centers. 95 – 100% of the women trained in the centers say that they use the skills learned in these classes to help support their families. Often, the women who begin coming to the Learning Centers to take sewing and tailoring courses end up also taking literacy courses.

This is the case with a female student who was recently promoted to the sixth grade. She says, “I am very happy, so much that I can’t explain, but you can see it on my face. Today, my eyes are familiar with reading and my hands familiar with sewing, all because of the AIL Office and their kind trainers. I and all of the center students always pray for Professor Sakena Yacoobi (the executive director of AIL) and all of her staff for giving us the opportunity to come out of our homes and learn many things from our kind teachers, it is a bright spot in our lives. Always, it has been my wish to be literate, work somewhere and do things to help my family and my people and thank God, now I can do it.”