Capacity building training bridges the gap between women and the Afghan government
10 January 2012 | Bamyan, Afghanistan
The poultry-raising project successfully bolstered ties between women in the community and the local government.
During decades of civil war, Afghan women remained deprived of a basic education and skills development opportunities.
As a part of USAID’s efforts to establish linkages between communities and local government and to empower communities to become self-sufficient, USAID-funded the poultry raising project for the Women’s Shura in Nayak Village, Yakawlang District of Bamyan Province. The community implemented the project in close collaboration with the Bamyan Provincial Line Department of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock and was designed to enhance the women’s knowledge of poultry breeding, increasing the women’s self-sufficiency.
The six-week project employed ten trainers and trained 300 women on how to build and maintain chicken cages, disease prevention techniques, and new breeding methods. At the end of the training, each recipient received seven chickens.
Najiba, head of the Nayak Women’s Shura expressed her gratitude to USAID and emphasized that women are in dire need of capacity building. She said such projects play a fundamental role in empowering women to improve their self-sufficiency. She further added that such initiatives enable women to take an active part in government and social services and ultimately play a role in the development of their community.
The local government and the communities warmly welcomed the project as a high-impact initiative that would help increase the knowledge and understanding of local women. The training played an effective role in promoting stability and bridging the gap between a previous underserved population and the government.