A Future for the Youth of Kabul
17 July 2003
In Kabul, where many of the cities' youth are the breadwinners for their families, traditional school isn’t an option. Oxfam partner Afghan Women's Education Center offers these children vocational training and a better future.
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| Ahmed Sabur: he and his 14-year-old brother are the family breadwinners. |
For the last four years, 12-year-old Ahmed Sabur has been cleaning shoes in Kabul's Shahr-I-Naw park. Although he earns only around 30 Afghanis (60 US cents) a day, he and his 14-year-old brother are the breadwinners for their family—a household that includes his grandmother and their four younger brothers and sisters.
With the help of the Afghan Women's Education Center, an Oxfam local partner, he is also able to attend classes. At the AWEC center, which is located in the Shahr-I-Naw district, Ahmed and 76 other street-working children receive basic education and health care.
According to Malala Abari, the center's social worker, many of the center's children are orphans being raised by extended-family members. With their families depending on their small incomes, they are unable to attend the public schools. Instead, they spend their days selling cigarettes and newspapers, collecting firewood, washing cars, and shining shoes. The AWEC education program offers them a chance for a better future.
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The center offers vocational training to women, older girls, and older boys, as well. Boys are taught carpentry and metalwork for six months in a program that prepares them to get jobs in the city's many small workshops. Girls and women, for whom employment opportunities are very limited, learn sewing and embroidery, which they can use to earn income from home. Upon completing the course, each woman is given a sewing machine and materials to start a home-based business.
In an effort to expand employment opportunities for women, AWEC plans to offer small-business training classes as well as microcredit access for women. Women in their programs have expressed interest in producing and marketing paper flowers, preserves, and pickles; the center will help them launch their own business cooperatives.
