Livelihood / Economic Empowerment
An Empowered Woman is an Empowered Community. This program is tailored at empowering Women and Youths to have equal access to resources, fight poverty, become independent and share opportunities with other community members — through Vocational Skills Training, Entrepreneurship Support, Business Development, and Mentorship and Leadership Development. Our vocational training equips youth with practical, in-demand skills in Tailoring, Carpentry and Joinery, Computer (ICT), Bakery and Food Processing, Music and Drama, and Art and Craft work — areas selected as some of the most enterprising and in demand by youth representatives themselves.
These are some of the activities and projects carried out under this program:
- Advocate for the rights of women and girls to be part of community transformation and independent decision-making.
- Business training and mentorship in Entrepreneurship, Business Leadership and Management, Finance literacy, Book keeping, Marketing, Digital literacy, Product pricing and Saving/credit management.
- Provide Vocational and Life Skills Training in Tailoring and Fashion Design, Carpentry and Joinery, Computer (ICT), Bakery and Food Processing, Bead work and Crochet, Painting, Hair Dressing, Music and Drama, Art and Craft work, urban farming technology, candle making, cosmetics making, soap making and bag making.
- Set up and equip vocational training centres with the tools and materials needed, and recruit qualified, experienced, community-development-minded tutors who train on a voluntary basis with a small motivation allowance.
- Register trainees on different vocational courses after a series of meetings with lead youth groups in the community.
- Give assessments on both practical and theory work, and support students to manage and accomplish a practical project.
- Provide startup capital and business equipment, materials and tools to set up a working space for women, youth and vocational graduates to run a profitable project.
- Build networking and marketing linkages, including social media advertising pages, to develop the community's business brand.
- Organize field tours and study visits to established businesses and community vocational workshops for learning, exploration and networking.
- Organize motivation, career guidance and entrepreneurial workshops for learners on an annual basis.
- Organize a graduation event each year, awarding completion certificates to learners who finish their vocational training.
- Celebrate World Women's and Youth Day, and run awareness workshops on government livelihood entitlement schemes for disadvantaged communities.
- Carry out monitoring and field supervision of graduated learners and beneficiaries, including out-of-school tutoring.
Donate to Support Women and Youth Projects
$100 — Tailoring & Craft Tools
Can buy tools for tailoring or materials for crochet work.
$200 — A Grocery Shop Startup
Can start a grocery shop for a woman.
$500 — Women's Advocacy Event
Can organise a women's advocacy event.
$1,500 — A Year of Group Training
Can support training for 2 women's groups in Business & Financial Literacy for a year.
$2,000 — Agro-Processing Business
Can support an agro-processing business for 10 women.
In I.C.T & Innovation, learners gain a complete understanding of computers, the Windows operating system, Microsoft Office, Adobe Suite, basic computer repair and internet usage — preparing them for secretarial bureaus, offices, or their own ICT enterprises. In Carpentry and Joinery, young men and women train for a year producing Chairs, Tables, Doors, Kitchen Cabinets, Beds, Office Shelves and School Desks, combined with entrepreneurship and marketing skills. We are also expanding into Hair Dressing, Plumbing, Bakery, Electricity, Brick Laying and Concrete Design.
In Fashion Design & Tailoring Practice, young men and women enroll on a 6-month to 1-year training in fashion designing and tailoring of garments, bags and shoes, gaining employable skills to get or create employment and generate income. We partner with various entrepreneurs to support beneficiaries in practically producing products for sale and increasing their service or product visibility.
In Art and Craft Work, learners understand and practice the elements of art, principles of design, colour theory and basic drawing, along with painting, bead work, crochet work, weaving and graphics — producing hats, mats, bags, jewellery and wall decorations from local materials such as banana fibres, natural dyes, bark cloth and sisal. Graduates are prepared to work as artists in their own capacity, generating income for their livelihood.
Some of the resulting projects include Outside Catering, Wine Making, Carpentry and Joinery, Cake Baking, Live Band Setup, Internet Café and Secretarial Bureaus — with beneficiaries given business skills and startup capital, plus periodic monitoring and continued mentoring.