Years of conflict and oppression in Afghanistan have left tens of thousands of women destitute with few economic options. With no education or marketable skills, few social services and limited economic opportunities, many women find themselves trapped in a spiral of poverty and isolation. Many of these women have been widowed by the conflict and left to care for their children without employable skills, credit, or support from their communities. Religious extremism has prevented a whole generation of girls from attaining an education and today these girls are women with children of their own to care for.

The rebuilding of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 has been beset by challenges and escalating insecurity. Government provided services are limited to non-existent and women are effectively denied many basic human rights. Facing such hopeless odds, many vulnerable women sink into depression and desperate economic measures such as selling off their daughters into marriage or sending their young children into the streets to beg for money to feed their family. Other women take on menial jobs for very little income. They have little or no say in decision-making and are marginalized by their communities. In such an environment children are extremely vulnerable to exploitation and are at the same time deprived of an education and a future.

Since 2003, War Child Canada has worked with local partners in Afghanistan to improve the lives of vulnerable women and their children. Currently, War Child Canada is implementing the Afghan Women’s Community Support Project in the poorest neighbourhoods of Kabul and Jalalabad. The project has been funded until the end of 2010 by the Canadian International Development Agency and is also supported by Club Penguin and numerous private donors. War Child Canada’s program has been carefully designed with its local partner, the Afghanistan Women’s Council. The program provides women with training in basic literacy and numeracy, life skills, and small business management as well as providing access to a series of loans to start a small business. Women are taught trades such as carpet weaving, poultry farming, quilt making, tailoring, baking, and food preservation. The program offers support and mentoring to participants for up to four years and the community is involved from day one.

Results have been astounding and have transformed the lives of the participants. Women who have taken the program are now able to support their children and have become financially independent. They adopt greater decision making roles within their communities. Many participants have become successful business owners and have gone on to mentor others in their community. They report increased confidence, and greater capacity to care for their families and themselves. With their new income, the women can now feed their children healthier foods and no longer require them to beg in the streets. Women also expressed their hopes that their daughters would be able to receive the education that they had been denied. Their children are healthier and enrolled in school full time. Their future is one of hope and self-sufficiency, rather than desperation and abject poverty.

With loan repayment rates over 98% this program is impressively sustainable. As word of the program’s success spreads, War Child and its partners look forward to a day when project activities will take place in every province of Afghanistan.