Skills Training Center
Skills training center
Assistance International firmly believes in enabling people to improve their own livelihood.
In our job skills training center different lessons equip people with vocational skills for a better future.
Sewing skills
Making local dresses can be a relatively stable source of income for women. Assistance International runs a course to teach groups of 8-10 women basic tailoring skills. With these skills they can start their own business as a seamstress.
The women in the course learn to cut patterns, use a sewing machine and make different sorts of clothing: from local dresses to school uniforms. Women that show a good command of sewing skills, are eligible to receive a sewing machine through the small business funding program of Assistance International. We usually choose 2-3 from each class.
Computer skills
Young people visit the skills training center to improve their computer skills. Over the course of 2,5 months they learn to use different frequently used software programmes, like Windows and Microsoft Office. When finished, they are even more ready for an office job.
Knitting skills
During winter there is usually less work for seamstresses. Therefore Assistance International also offers classes in knitting as another skill to help women improve their livelihood in hard winter months. When they acquire this skill, women can provide warm clothes for their own children or sell the scarfs, cardigans and hats that they make. Currently the job skills training center runs two groups of about 10 women who teach each other new patterns and knitting skills.
Basic skills
A program wherein women who did not have the chance to finish their education, can catch up with reading and writing skills or learn essential math to help them in a future job. The women are delighted with the skills that they learn: “I never finished school because the civil war interrupted my school years. I could read a little bit, but now I learn to write too.”
