Development Works - Social Enterprise in Afghanistan

‘Humanitarian Aid’ save lives, alleviates suffering and promotes human dignity. Activities are short term and urgent, often in response to war or natural emergencies.

‘Aid’ or ‘Development’ Aid is short term humanitarian relief. Development primarily seeks to reduce poverty by improving economic and social structures.

‘Sustainable Development’ delivers social and economic activities that satisfies todays needs without making things worse for future generations.

‘Social Enterprise’ is often described as business for a community purpose. Beyond profit, success can be measured by community and environmental benefit.

 'Social Enterprise'

Opportunity for Afghan Women

At-home egg production greatly raises widow income.

Women in Afghanistan lack economic opportunity.

Since its inception, Development Works has placed an emphasis on providing options for women. We’ve trained women to take line and management positions in factories, tweaked procurement requests so we could train and engage female garment workers and forced ourselves to think creatively and reach out to the community to overcome obstacles to create opportunity.

In rural Kandahar, which is to say, one of the most conservative societies on earth, we found that once  community and religious leaders were engaged in real dialogue, they were quite open to reviewing their culture’s near total ban on opportunities for women. With the Kandahari in the lead, and our team very much following, a small pilot egg production scheme targeting 30 women was launched. We provided training, the chickens and a soft loan to participants. We hoped that the taste and freshness of local eggs would keep these women in business.

It did. At last count, more than 250 women – mostly widows – are active in the project, most of whom are doubling their income while providing needed protein to their children. The network is fully self-sustaining, leaving the Dev Works team with nothing more to do but enjoy the occasional omelet.

start << opportunity for afghan women ……………. >>> go to – farmers