Mohammed Abdelhalim Al-Hamadi is one of the beneficiary students of the physically disabled center building project at Al-Dhabab road – Al-Mudhafar district of Taiz governorate. He describes the state of misery and sadness as he was deprived of education due to his condition and circumstances, because he is the son of a poor family unable to afford the cost of movement to Taiz governorate or the capital Sana›a to enroll in the disabled rehabilitation centers and consequently having the opportunity to become an active member of the society was almost none. AlHammadi adds that following the intervention by the PWP in building the disabled center his hope is revived and has achieved aspirations and the look of the society around him has changed from compassion to respect and praise.
Through its interventions in the vocational training and social affairs, the PWP targeted segments of the society complaining negligence, despite the fact that these interventions serve a large segment such as persons with special needs, rural women and productive families. Therefore PWP interventions were qualitative with concrete impacts among these segments enabling them to reintegrate into the society through establishment of rehabilitation centers for the disabled and other centers for training women in different governorates that played a pivotal role in the development of the productive training fields particularly among young women.
The training is correlated to the needs of the market while the promotion of these skills has consequently led to raising the market skills that resulted in the creation of more job opportunities and generate more r income for women.
Furthermore, there are numerous indirect benefits contributing to the creation of additional job opportunities for additional male and female trainers as well as the number of the administrative staff.
Working women
The productive families center at Al-Kanawis district in Al-Hodeidah governorate is a story told by Zohoor Doblah who became one of the business ladies in the area being in the past one of the daughters of a poor family.
Following the intervention of PWP by building the productive families center at Al-Kanawis she learned the craft of sewing and embroidery and after her graduation from the center she started her own project of sewing clothes for women in her area until she became famous with cliental, and got the assistance of one of her female relatives whom she trained at the center to meet the requirements of clients particularly at the seasons of feasts and weddings.
As narrated by Zohoor Doblah, her activity expanded to market her products in the nearby areas exploiting the weekly market days visited by nearby residents to buy their needs. Thus Zohoor was successful in marketing larger quantities of children›s clothes for girls and embroidered cloth for women and thereby started managing a workshop with about thirteen (13) female workers.
Achievement
The total number of performed projects in the field of vocational training and social affairs for the period 2014-2016 is about 9 projects with a total cost of USD 2,375,788 with about 42,029 beneficiaries that provided 5,112 work/months as job opportunities to reach accumulative number of 97 subprojects at a total cost of USD 14,076,511 with 577,850 beneficiaries and provided 40,169 work/months as job opportunities.
Amran governorate witnessed a successful and pioneering experiment by the PWP that transformed hundreds of unemployed women to productive families with income generating projects that have had positive impacts on improvement of livelihood for many families that were suffering poverty and unemployment.
Good fruit:
The productive families project in Amran city is a good fruit of PWP intervention in upgrading women›s qualification and a successful experiment achieving positive impact on many families as stated by Aman Allah Al-Dhabari one of the graduates of the center in the field of sewing top-notch belts. Similarly there are tens of women who became producers of income generation handicrafts that realized livelihood prosperity to their families.
This sector has proved extremely successful in transforming livelihoods of important segments of the society who were complaining from marginalization and deprivation such as women and persons with special needs to be active and productive elements after being sufferers of poverty and need.
Through its interventions in the vocational training and social affairs, PWP was able to qualify workforce especially among women through giving them income generation skills and crafts.
The planning process to integrate gender issues and women in the interventions, development programs and projects requires understanding the different social roles, responsibilities and activities of women and men, as such differences result in different needs whether practical or strategic, where in the past attention was focused on the society without giving any consideration to this difference and as a result the role of women is mostly disregarded in the development process despite the fact that their participation is a principal pillar.
To strengthen that participation, attention must be given to the different roles of men and women and the different relations and interactions between those prevalent relations and roles. This grasp is the cause behind the strong attention to the gender which simply means realizing that in each environment the needs and roles of men and women are different.
Women often are prohibited from attending village meetings or if permitted, they have no right to talk and even when this prohibition is traditional rather than official this must be taken into consideration and what happens mostly is that women authorized to participate in such meetings are not representatives of all the local women and hence it is necessary to be aware of such facts. In each segment of a participant groups we need to think in the specific roles and needs of men and women.
It is important to encourage and increase women participation and the challenge here is how to attract women to participate in the issues of concern to them and seeking to solve those problems instead of inciting them. Again, and based on customs and traditions in each environment the methods of establishing communication and participation will be different as it is often necessary to deal first with men and then bring the women groups and discuss matters with them.
Finally, these considerations related to men and women and their roles and specific needs are also valid for application when dealing with the youth of each sex separately as for example there is a clear difference between the roles and needs of girls and those of the elder women.