Project Good for Girls is a not-for-profit organization that supports girls in countries around the world to gain the education, skills and self-esteem they need to become independent, empowered adults able to realize their full potential and be forces for change in their communities.
Project Good for Girls has been supporting our partner in Ethiopia to provide skills-training to girls. This is an important aspect of meaningful education, where girls are equipped not only to stay in school and complete their education, but also to be able to seize opportunities for sustainable income-generation in today’s changing economy, whether through digital skills, higher education or vocational livelihoods.
Given that higher education is not for everyone — and largely inaccessible to most young people in the country — skills that focus on employability, entrepreneurship and vocations are essential to create pathways to independence for girls, especially when many are being pressured to marry early as a means to security and support.
One of the needs-based initiatives, requested by the girls themselves, is sewing and garment making. In the fall, the first co-hort of 14 sewing students in Bekoji completed their 3-month training, gaining comfort with machines and producing items like clothes, bedsheets, and pillows. The next step will be helping them to launch their own cooperative business, including renting workshop space and providing sewing machines and materials so they can begin making school uniforms and other products to sell in their communities.
The sewing group is made up of some girls in their final year of high school, some who have graduated, and some in 11th grade.
The funds we raised last year helped our partner organization in Ethiopia – Girls Gotta Run Foundation (GGRF) – pilot a self-defence programme for adolescent girls, after their mothers raised concerns about a rise in traditional ‘abduction’ practices in Soddo (where the programme is based). Thanks to YOUR support the new self-defence initiative got off to a roaring start. 50 girls received hands-on training in taekwondo-based self-defence, as part of critical life skills learning. Their training is continuing, and more girls will soon be added to the group.
Over the next 2 years, we hope to focus our efforts on empowering adolescent girls who are alumni of our partner GGRF’s athletic scholars programme. Because of the success of the programme, these girls are avoiding early marriage and completing high school. Some hope to continue their education in college, while others have dreams of becoming entrepreneurs. We hope to support vocational training to help girls develop the necessary skills they need to start small businesses such as sewing and needlework, hairdressing, and shopkeeping (all based on requests from the girls themselves).
We also want to help grow something that so many of us take for granted. Digital literacy. This remains an immense challenge in Ethiopia for young people, because of poor tech infrastructure, and limited to no access to devices and the internet. Girls are especially impacted – cultural stereotypes mean that technology of any kind is still viewed as a male domain. Many families also simply cannot afford to pay for internet access, or devices, much less learn how to use them. This will shut out too many young people from 21st century digital economy opportunities.
This year, a few laptops and mobile devices were procured for the girls by GGRF, and the hunger to learn how to use these was insatiable!! Plans are now underway to create two computer labs, one in each programme location, which will serve as a safe space for girls to study and develop their digital skills. Launching the labs, complete with space rental, equipment, devices and staffing will cost $20,000 over the course of a year.
We hope to raise $10,000 to fully launch one of the labs. Is this ambitious? YES. Can we do it? WE THINK ALSO YES!
Project Good for Girls is proud to continue partnering with GGRF to expand its support for adolescent girls both joining the programme, and as alumni so they can continue with their studies, develop important life and vocational skills, and become leaders in their communities.
Code to Inspire is the first computer coding school for girls in Afghanistan. We started our partnership with them in 2020, right in the middle of the global COVID-19 outbreak, by raising much needed emergency funds to help provide internet access to girls who had to continue their work at home when the coding school was forced to close. We also contributed professional tablets to kick off a new advanced graphic design programme at the school. The school re-opened and 75 girls were able to graduate this year in coding and graphic design – several of the girls were already earning an income building websites and apps for companies.
Things changed drastically over the last few weeks.
Fereshteh Forough, founder of Code to Inspire
In light of recent events we are launching this urgent fundraising appeal to help the girls of Code to Inspire, who have overnight seen their living situations deteriorate rapidly. We have a generous donor who will match up to $2500 in funds by midnight 27 Sept (EST), so every dollar you donate will become two.Donate here.
Monday Sept 19th was the first day back at school in Afghanistan under the Taliban. But only for boys. Fereshteh Forough, the founder of Code to Inspire has received many urgent messages for help from the girls and their families as the humanitarian crisis continues to grow more dire, especially for girls and women. In her own words:
“These past weeks as much as I was worried and concerned about the future of our girls with our coding school, I received heartbreaking messages from our students whom either themselves as the main breadwinner of the family or someone from their family lost their jobs and have no income at all which led to food insecurity, not being able to pay rent, medical needs, commute and etc.
Here are a few of the messages I received:
“I don’t have a father and our situation at home is very bad.”
” My father is disabled and my mom and I were the breadwinners. We both lost jobs. Any help can save us.”
“My mother was a government human rights lawyer. The Taliban took my father as hostage to force my mother to resign which it happened. My father is hidden and we don’t have any source of income since my mother lost her job.”
“I don’t have a father. I was the only breadwinner. My mother is sick and we have to pay for her medical bills which we don’t have any money for.”
There are currently 80 students asking for cash assistance to support their families. With an average family of six, cash assistance of $200 per family can help cover food, rent and medical expenses.
Every bit counts if you can spare it. Thank you for your help.
45 graduates in graphic design, Jun 2021 (Photo courtesy of Code to Inspire)30 graduates in coding, Feb 2021 (Photo courtesy of Code to Inspire)
Project Good for Girls 