A magic box that creates future
It is a metal box. It does not look to be special in any way. But it is a magic box, which creates a better future.
It is a metal box. It does not look to be special in any way. But it is a magic box, which creates a better future. In the district Sholgara you will now find 45 such boxes in the villages. If you look down in any of them you will find some office equipment; binders, hole punchers, and notebooks. In most of the boxes you find 15 banknotes of 100 Afghanis, in other words 1 500 Afghanis. Each of the one hundred Afghanis collected is carefully recorded. Anyone who can’t write has marked with a thumbprint to certify that he or she contributed their share.
The boxes belong to the self-help groups formed in Sholgara, located in Balkh, a bit south from Mazar-e-Sharif. Self-help groups consist of either women or men. Yet there are no mixed groups. There are more groups for women than for men. In each group there are also one or a few persons with disabilities.
The idea is that each of the 15 members in the self-help groups save and contribute 100 Afghanis per month. When a member of the group saved at least half a year, he or she has the opportunity to take a loan for a future investment. Some of the members in self-help groups are given the opportunity to attend vocational training, such as carpentry, tailoring, repair of mobile phones or carpet weaving. SCA also contributes to small projects to improve roads, build community facilities and other infrastructure. Support is also given to training for the self-help groups.
These self-help groups will after one year develop their Village Saving and Loan Association (VSLA). The VSLA will then support the producer groups of the community to have a complete package of livelihood for improvement in quality of lives. This package will cover all steps from production at village level to forming a shareholder company at district level. SCA will facilitate the target groups in all steps.
Summarise all these activities, and the result will be rural development. A number of measures that together create development and a dignified life in a rural area where poverty is high and where there also is a high level of insecurity. Both The Taliban and other criminal groups are present in the area, which of course makes it difficult to attract investment.
There is hope, but also concerns that the efforts are not enough. In each group I visit members raise the problem that there isn’t enough money to provide vocational training for all those who have need.
The women also stress the fact that only few of them can read and write. And they hope that SCA may also contribute to literacy: “Remember, we did not go to school during the Taliban time.”
Below you will meet three families which, through this project will hopefully get a better situation in life. The characters may not be fully representative of the members of self-help groups, in that they all have positions such as presidents or cashiers in their groups, and can read and write. Thus, they will probably not be relevant for vocational training, which only those most in need will receive.
The idea is to return to Sholgara, to these three families, and others involved in the project, to let them tell us how life develops.
Meet the people