Community Development

Fostering opportunities for economic growth and sustainability

Organizing community leaders, officials, children, and parents is an important part of Dosti’s educational development program. Without support from their families, friends, and neighbors, children will find success in school difficult to achieve. At the same time Dosti understands that building a school isn’t enough in a community without clean water, a health clinic, or any means for adults to pull their families out of poverty. The following is just a sampling of the Dosti sponsored community projects that have helped transform villages throughout Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province:

• 25 clean water wells
• 4 Women’s Skill Development Centers (for knitting, sewing, and embroidery). 30 students graduate per term, with each student receiving a sewing machine upon graduation.
• 4 Adult Educational facilities for men and women to improve their literacy skills
• 15 Women’s Groups organized at the village level, for women to discuss all types of issues, including improving their own economic assets

Dosti plans for 2006 and beyond

• Increase vocational training opportunities for women
• Improve strategies for getting women produced goods to market (including global)
• Identify vulnerable women (single, widowed) who might need extra support in pursuing and sustaining vocational training opportunities
• Assist women who are interested in forming cooperatives
• Implement micro-credit programs