HYDERABAD: Women’s participation in income generation is the key to economic empowerment and is pivotal in the nation’s development. At the certification ceremony, the development experts discussed the poverty reduction program for women cotton workers to uplift their economic status by providing them training for small home-based enterprises.
Sindh Community Foundation held this training under the Asia Gender Equality Fund of the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network -AVPN. SCF completed four three-day training programs for 120 women cotton workers on poultry rearing, vegetable and food preservation, and livestock management. SCF trained four batches, each of 30 trainees consisting of 10 women from each batch from 12 villages of district Matiari.
Experts, including Rajkumar, Nalila Khaskheli, Dr. Hira Araeen, and Dr. Sundus Bhutto from the Agriculture Extension Department of Sindh Agriculture University Tando Jam, delivered trainings.
The training covered poultry rearing, poultry and livestock management and healthcare, vaccination, disease control and food and vegetable presentation pickle-making techniques and recipes, introduction to the fermentation and equipment, packaging, value addition, marketing and linkages enterprise development, and financial literacy. The participants were provided with practical demonstrations on both topics and were engaged in practical exercises.
At the certification ceremony, SCF’s head, Javed Hussain, said that women cotton workers experience off-season poverty. To address this, SCF has developed an off-season poverty reduction program through a home-based income generation program for these workers. He also added that SCF will provide them with seed support, connect with market linkages, and mentoring support to start their home-based small businesses. He added that it will positively impact the lives and livelihoods of women cotton workers in dealing with off-season poverty.
He emphasized that the government should support such initiatives by providing seed capital for these women to start their businesses and grow.
The trainers emphasized that women often engaged in home-based food preservation and livestock and poultry-related works, the advanced skills will empower them to earn better livelihoods through home-based small businesses if they have the right information on market linkages and an understanding of market demand and supply nexus.
One of the participants, Naseem, a woman cotton worker from village Hashim Mallah, said that we learned new techniques in poultry and livestock management, and now we will be able to grow our own small business. This will also increase our income and help us to deal with off-season poverty.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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