Empower 100 Child Brides in Pakistan

I must say “Thank You to Girls Not Brides & its Donors, for giving us an opportunity to get skill and awareness about our rights”, said by Najma Ahmed, 28 Years old student of Vocational Centre who married at the age of 15. She further said, “I was not given a chance to learn or earn for livelihood, and this vocational centre for livelihood is providing me with the skill and a hope to earn for my 8 Children”. Najma said, “I give 11 births in last 13 years, I and my children are the victim of malnourishment and remain ill. 50% of our monthly income that is very small goes to medical store and doctors.” She said with sorrow, “My 3 children died due to anaemia and malnourishment, and I did nothing to save them because I was myself a child and illiterate. I did no convince my husband to delay or gap as I always considered it my fate”.   Najma said, “I know some sewing but in the village, there is no work order but this vocational centre for livelihood is hope for good income in near future and all because of your support”.

Vocational Centre for Livelihood was taken over and established under the project “Empower 100 Child Brides in Pakistan” in last quarter.  2-year Memorandum of Agreement signed with the Government of Punjab to operational this non-functional Technical Training Center for the flood-affected population. Project team did the following in this quarter:

1. 17 Sewing Machines repaired and updated and 10 Embroidery machines are ready now
2. 7 Sensitization sessions using multimedia presentation conducted which includes the issues of SRHR, Gender-Based Violence, Child marriage, women empowerment, sexual harassment at workplace.   
3. Daily 4-hour training for last 2 months enabled one group to prepare 30 Uniforms and 30 baby dresses while cloth and material provided under project expenses
4. Tailoring & Embroidery Manuals distributed among literate students
5. For practice, Plane paper sheets, old newspapers and cheap cloth distributed

For getting feedback, students stand together to say thank you and they said, “We are not getting only skill but we are also becoming advocates to end Gender-Based Violence and Child marriage. Now we can defend our rights, we can change the society; we can change our generation to think for rights of women”. 

Links:

• Short video of Vocational Center for Livelihood thanking you