Due to the importance of supporting and empowering women to help them find work and achieve economic stability, the Syrian Society for Social Development, in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund / Syria, implemented a set of vocational trainings on sewing and seasonal agriculture.

Each training targeted 12 women between the ages of 18 and 60 years.

Sewing and tailoring training aims to teach women the basics of this profession in a professional manner.

The aim of the seasonal agriculture training is to introduce women to the most important crops that are not widely available in the local community, and to train them on different methods of farming in a scientific and thoughtful way in order to avoid any imbalance and improve the agricultural products.

The women expressed the benefit they got after the training, as some of them commented:

“It is nice that a woman has a special job for her own that strengthens her personality and enables her to live without having to ask her husband for money.”

"I am 16 years old and I love sewing and I would have liked to enroll in a course, but the financial conditions were very difficult, and, luckily, thanks to you, I am now learning it for free"

"We needed this training in order to get acquainted with the modern farming methods, and to know more about the new crops that we did not know before, such as thyme, broccoli, cabbage, red beet and soybeans."

 

Vocational training creates a golden opportunity for people who are trying to find a way to learn a profession so that can become a source of income for them. As a continuation of the series of vocational trainings provided by the Syrian Society for Social Development in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund / Syria in a safety space to support and empower women in Aleppo, a number of vocational tool boxes were distributed to the women who received the following trainings:

Manufacture of pastries and sweets, sewing, hairdressing and beauty, dairy and cheese manufacturing, food processing and preservation, wood burning, creams and perfumes preparing.

The trainees expressed their gratitude for being enabled and given the opportunity to contribute to supporting their families.

Some of the feedback we received was as follows:

"By having this kit, I will be able to help my husband with household expenses and start my small business. My husband has encouraged me after he had been opposed to the idea at first."

"I became financially dependent on myself, and I’m no longer a burden on someone’s shoulder. Finally, my dream has come true and I have my own project."

"Hopefully, my relationship with my husband will improve and our problems will start to solve, after I have become a productive woman and I will be able to help him with the house expenses

 

The Syrian Society for Social Development, in partnership with the UNFPA, and with funding from UNESCO, trained 40 young men and women in the skills of voiceover that would open up a modern and popular field of work for them. In fact, the training was part of the first practical plan to introduce the sound equipment used in professional studios and a breakthrough for trainees in the field of voiceover acting.

During the training, a number of books and articles were selected by the Syrian Blind Care Association to be recorded. Indeed, at the end of the training, eight young men and women recorded the books in a professional studio.

The recorded audio books were presented as part of an Audio Library to the Syrian Blind Care Association in an official ceremony attended by Dr. Seiko Sugita, Programme Specialist in Social and Human Sciences at UNESCO, Beirut.

Title	Genre	Author	Publisher	Voiceover actor(s)
Thorn Paradise	Reflections	Tāha Hussein	Dār al-Maʿāref	Abdu-l-Karim Tazkera-ji
About Western Theatre	Literary criticism	Tāha Hussein	Dār al-ʿIlm lil-Malāyīn	Esrāʾ al-Ahmad
Epistle of Bliss	Epistolary narrative	Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī	Al-Mashreq E-Library	Muhammad Hādheri
Short Stories	Miscellaneous short stories	Various	Internet harvest	Barāʾah Abu-Rās
Medical Information	Popular science article	Hiba at-Tabbāʿ	https://mawdoo3.com/	Yamām Kassār - Fātima Jauhar
Short Biographies of Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī and Tāha Hussein	Biography		Wikipedia	Ayman ash-Shiblī