Jafakash Aurat Project, Supporting Skills and Enterprise Development amongst Gwadar Women is a unique project and displays the Government Private Partnership initiative. The project is funded by Ministry of Women Development and executed by Khushhali Bank.
The project was inaugurated on 22nd January, 2006 by Ms Nilofar Bakhtiar (Minister at that time) and Chief Minister Balochistan (Jam Muhammad Yousuf) along with other dignitaries from Ministry of Women Development and Khushhali Bank being the execution agency for the project.
The project has two components, vocational skills training of local women and providing micro credit to enable the women to set up their own micro businesses or acquiring gainful employment for the well being of their economic conditions.
The project was operational from1st October 2006 with several trades identified after conducting extensive training needs assessments. As both the Ministry and Khushhali Bank believes in high quality training thus professional modules were developed after an extensive research at Gwadar by the consultants and representatives of Khushhali Bank.
The modules were developed for training on Computers, Tailoring and Designing, Office Management, Beautician, Cooking on Commercial Basis, Job Placement and Enterprise Development. The project has been well received by the local community and is driving huge response and due to limited premises the management needs to devise strategies to provide an opportunity to all eager students.
Each module is divided in four sub modules starting from basic, moving to intermediate to graduation and then advance levels, as the learning in adults is a slow process therefore gradually enhancing the skill of the individual and imparting as much information which can be easily absorbed by the students. Each sub module is for 15 days and the students can easily leave the training and join later for the advanced skills training if is not able to attend, thus by doing this the retention rate for retaining students for the complete course is 100%.
The modules are designed especially for the women of Gwadar keeping in mind their understanding levels and by including as much visualisation as possible so that the complex processes/procedures can be simplified.
Jafakash Aurat Project, Gwadar is well known and the male community praises the efforts of the Ministry of Women Development and Khushhali Bank for initiating such a project, and they would like such projects to be replicated in every city and village so that the local women folk can contribute to enhance socio economic activities.
The girls are coming in huge numbers and Khushhali Bank has been trying to increase the existing capacity of the training center. Women feel that the their father's, husband's and brothers feel comfortable in sending them for training and no other initiative in the city has gathered such response.
Jafakash Aurat project since 1st October till 1st September have trained nearly 1, 000 women in different skills and about 413 women have been provided micro loans to set up their businesses, some 50 women have started jobs in places like the local schools, Gwadar Development Authority, Hospitality Industry (local hotels, motels etc) and indirectly around 1,500 women jobs have been created locally.
The outlook of Gwadar women has changed and this project has provided them access not only to training but has provided them immense confidence and have boosted their morale and made them believe in themselves and this is how they are able to contribute towards the economic and social uplift.
Eradicating poverty takes many years but providing the right direction to the women for a better future is more then a hope and this is what Khushhali Bank and Ministry of Women Development are geared to achieve. The project has inflicted a transformational change in Women of Gwadar city and this can only be witnessed by visiting the city and meeting these women who have been livingin darkness with out any hope in the future.
The development of Gwadar city as an important port city in the future has enabled them to have a vision of the future and Khushhali Bank promises them for changing lives and transforming destinies.