This project provides training, equipment, and supplies for 300 people including school dropouts, orphans, polio survivors, and women recuperating from obstetric fistulas. Areas of training include tailoring, leather working, and weaving. The majority of the students are women.
Over 45% of the population of Niger lives on less that $1.90 per day. The literacy rate is about 30%. Fewer than 60% of young people enter secondary education and less than 20% complete secondary school. Under these conditions, there are limited opportunities for people to get an education or find work.
We provide training in trades to people so that they have skills that allow them to find paying work or to be self employed. Instruction, equipment, materials and transportation are supplied free of charge to the students. We select trades (tailoring, leather working, and weaving) that are in demand in the local Nigerien market and that require only modest startup costs.
As of December 2023, we have worked with 250 people. In a survey in February 2022 of 36 graduates from our tailoring and leather working programs in 2021, we located 33 of the graduates and they all had paying work. We trained 30 women recuperating from obstetric fistula at a national clinic in 2023, and those participants we could track in 2024 were earning income as tailors. In 2024, leather workers who were polio survivors began earning additional income while still being trained.
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