Ms. Jahantab, the eldest daughter of her family, a hardworking girl with strong determination to learn vocation and reach to the highest peaks of success, is a role model for her sisters. She has struggled for years to learn professional tailoring and now, eventually, her dream came true.

Jahantab’s brief biography

Jahantab is a 25 year-old-girl who has been trying to fulfill her father’s and her dream in learning tailoring vocation for years. After taking vocational training courses of Help organization, with hard work and support of her family especially her father, she is now the owner of a successful tailoring workshop. She is happy that after spending a tough childhood and adolescence, she is now a successful young girl. Also, she experienced a very tough time in migration like her compatriots and now that she returned her hometown, she is happy and has a job after receiving support and training from Help and OSAA. Although she lost her father, she is very happy living with her family and has taken over the responsibilities of the family.

Motivation to learn tailoring vocation

I was born in a poor family. My father had experienced so much hardships to make money but still we were not in a good economic situation. Therefore, always my dad told me, “My daughter, you should try hard and learn tailoring. Only a skill can help you improve your economic condition and with that you can make your and your family wishes happen.” I myself wanted to learn tailoring to meet my family’s expectations.

I was looking around for various tailoring courses for days. Every course that I enrolled made me only to work for them or asked me high fees to learn the vocation. Over the years, I was not to learn tailoring at professional level. Everyday my family asked me: “Have you not still learned professional sewing?” and this situation made me so disappointed. Eventually, I found out about Help programs and its Technical Vocational and Education Training (TVET) project, so I registered in Ansari VTC and joined “advanced tailoring” class. During the six months of training, I could learn all advanced sewing techniques. Also, with OSAA Employment Services Center guidance, consultancies and multilateral support in setting up a business and marketing I could step into the world of business.

Ending of the training and starting the business 

After graduating from Ansari center and receiving the toolkit and guidance from Employment Services Center, Jahantab with her sisters, Najibah, Aziza and Asefa established a tailoring workshop called “Maral” to earn money through it. She has four colleagues in her workshop with her three siblings, each of them comes from a different family, and this means that she has created work and income through her small business for several families. This 8-person group is very successful and receives a lot of orders from the market. Jahantab is now able to earn, at least 15,000 Afghanis per month and financially supports her entire family.

Jahanatab’s future plansJahantab is very successful in tailoring, she has many plans for her and her sisters’ future. Although she has managed to do her job perfectly with her small business in different markets even in other provinces, but her high motivation and ability makes her to have thirst for more work. She wants to develop her business by establishing new connections and cooperation with bigger tailoring workshops and along with that wants to develop her English skills to be able to operate in larger foreign markets. She finds herself capable of working in the global market. She says that she wants to expand her business in the future and create other branches of her workshop in other provinces of the country. She wants to train a lot of trainees so that more girls can financially be independent and successful. Ms. Jahantab appreciates Organization for Sustainable Aid in Afghanistan (OSAA), German Help INGO, WFP and other organizations and facilitators of this program who during the training course provided services such as setting up small businesses and supported them during and after the training course.