July 2016—Roya, a 40-year-old mother of nine, is the sole provider for her children. She works throughout the day to bake the distinctive Afghan flatbread known as naan in a windowless room. Her face is swaddled in a covering that is white with flour and dark with soot.

While the work is hard, Roya’s current surroundings are a vast improvement over her life just five months ago, when she and her children were starving, and the family was in danger of being evicted from their apartment.

“It is good,” Roya says squatting back on her heels and wiping tears from her eyes. “I work all day in the baking shop and all night tailoring, but life now is better than it was before.”

Roya credits a group of six young graduates of USAID’s Promote Women’s Leadership Development Jawana program with finding a way for her to save her children. The Taliban once excluded women from playing decisive roles in their society. But today, with the support of the Afghan Government and internationally sponsored programs like Promote, Afghan women are seizing the opportunity to build a prosperous future for their country.

The women—all in their early 20s—completed a 12-week course in January 2016 designed to help young, literate women take on decision-making roles in business, government and the civil and academic sectors. As a prerequisite for graduation, students must design and run a project that will immediately benefit disadvantaged women in their community, while also offering a source of income that they can rely upon to support their families for years to come.

The Jawana (which means “sapling” in Dari) program targets women between the ages of 18 and 30 who have at least a high school diploma. The Royesh (seedling) program targets girls and women between 15 and 24 years old who have not graduated from high school.

“We didn’t want it to be something that would last only one week or a day,” explains 19-year-old Mariam, one of the Jawana graduates. “We knew that if we were really going to help women change their lives, we would need to assist them in a really concrete way.” The six put their heads together and devised a plan.

The Jawana participants presented their idea of helping impoverished mothers open local bakeries to the Afghanistan National Trader’s Association, which generously donated funds. They then canvassed the neighborhood to determine who was most in need. With nine children to feed and little money coming in, Roya was an easy choice.

Today, with the help of the Jawana graduates, seven mothers who were previously living on the edge of poverty are now working at bakeries across the city, and their 45 children are able to sleep a bit more soundly.

“If it weren’t for these young girls, I would have really been in trouble,” says Roya. “They really helped me.”

USAID’s Promote Women’s Leadership Development program runs from September 2014 to September 2019. The program has graduated about 1,400 students to date, and more than 100 Jawana projects have reached thousands of beneficiaries.

*Many Afghans use only one name.

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