Empower young women through vocational training
Women in Africa, especially in rural areas are the focal point of sustainable livelihoods for their families and local communities. Women are usually refered to as the backbone of African communities. As active economic and social agents, women do most household chores, take care of children and perform the majority of agricultural activities. Their role is crucial for the progress of rural households, local and national economies. In ISED, we ally with the Sustainable Development Goal 5 by the UN to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
Cynthia on the photo is a 16 years old orphan and single mother of one who lives with her elderly grandfather. After dropping out of school due to her pregnancy, she was forced to stay at home and support her grandfather while caring for her baby girl. After meeting and interacting with Cynthia, she expressed her interest in sewing and her desire to start an education to become a tailor. With our ISED team in Cameroon, we found an established tailor who accepted to have Cynthia as one of her apprentice for three years so she could learn the craft.
Like Cynthia, ISED wants to give young and ambitious underprivileged women the chance to learn specific skills for specific careers. Our goal is that the young women involve in our program get the chance too an education that will strengthen their capacity and and provide an opportunity to develop specific skills tailored to prospective employers or to become self employed.
In ISED we want to encourage women to engage in activities that will enable them to be self sufficient, independent and responsible for their children.
Nadege on the right side of the image is from the English speaking region of Cameroon. After the anglophone crisis escalated in 2017, she moved to Yaounde the country’s capital to seek for greener pastures for her family.However, faced with difficulties raising her children and dealing with the expensive life in the big city of she reached out to ISED for financial assistance to start a small business (selling smoked fish in the market). We decide to provide her with the finances she needed to begin her business and accompany her to purchase the products. More than six months after assisting Nadege to start her business, our team met up with her to find out how her business was doing. The photo of her sitting infant her marchandise was taken during that visit.
In ISED, It is Important for us to follow up on the initiatives we engage in and the people we assist in our program. An opportunity to evaluate the successes or failures of these activities and adopt ways of making things better if need be.
One of our missions in ISED is to encourage and support vocational training for young women where they can acquire skills and build successful careers for themselves and their families.
Elizabeth featured on the picture is from Ndu, a region located in the north west part of Cameroon. She fled her region to relocate in Yaounde (country ‘s capital due to the Anglophone crisis. She is one of the beneficiaries of the fundings that we provided to train 50 young women to acquire tailoring skills.
Since 2021 we have been working in partnership with Emmaculate…a tailor who has been exercising her trade for more than 20 years. This partnership had as main purpose to train young women most of whom are internally displaced refugees (who fled their region due to ongoing crisis). With little or no educational background, these girls have the zeal to learn a trade that will give them hope for a better future. With the funds we allocated, we can ensure that these young women have the necessary equipment and environment needed to go through their apprenticeship.
According to Elizebeth, “this opportunity we have thanks to ISED has prevented some of us to become prostitutes”.
Sadly, most internally displaces girls who left the war zone regions of Northwest and Southwest have been forced in to prostitution due to lack of jobs and money to fend for themselves.
One of the main activities that we engage in to empower women is to create an environment where they can come together and discuss on their daily challenges, ambitions and hope for the future. Hence, to celebrate the 11th of February in Cameroon (a national day that honours all the youths and embraces the importance of education), we organise discussion sessions with learners and youths from different institutions and backgrounds. Our ambition is to create an environment where young men and especially women would share their experiences, challenges and hope for the future. Furthermore, the have the chance to share their views on the economic and social situation of the country and how they could contribute to create a stable and prosperous future. Some common discussion themes are the value of education, youth pregnancy, human rights, women empowerment, Covid -19, innovation, poverty, economy and hope.
One of the most significant challenge that young women face in subsaharan Africa and Cameroon in particular is the lack of access to sanitary towels. Due to financial constrain most girls ISED organized a discussion session with young have been forces to use unhygienic options to sanitary pads. consequently, some girls feel shale and tend to avoid going to school/ To remedy this situation, In ISED we have made it one of our major project to provide sanitary towels to young girls from different institution. In the picture, our team visited girls age between10 and 12 from the Mongo Beti College in Yaounde.
This was an opportunity to talk about the values and rights of the girl child and the importance of feminine hygiene.
We concluded our event with the distribution of sanitary towels to all the participants..