On March 10, 2022, a forum on promising trades was held in Fada N’Gourma. The main aim of the forum was to “enable young girls and women to discover and choose a promising trade for apprenticeship with Master Craftsmen”. Organized in collaboration with theAssociation pour la Recherche et la Formation Agro-écologie (ARFA), the forum provided an opportunity for beneficiaries, trade professionals, financing structures and successful models from the region to discover and share their experiences of female entrepreneurship.
For the 2022 edition, 180 young girls and women (including 63 internally displaced persons) will be trained for a short period in promising and innovative trades in the towns of Fada and Gayeri. To increase the chances of success, the beneficiaries’ parents and/or husbands are involved in the training and installation process, hence their presence at the trades forum. In his closing remarks, Mr . Guiani DIALLO, head of the vocational training department, representing the Regional Director in charge of youth, thanked the partners for choosing the East region to implement the Promotion de l’accès des filles à un Système Educatif et de Formation Professionnelle de qualité (PROMESSE-FP) project. He also urged the beneficiaries to be assiduous during their training period, in order to ultimately achieve the project’s objectives.
A visit to master craftsmen in the town of Fada revealed the self-sacrifice of the learners in cohort 2021.
Following the trades forum held on March 10, 2022 to enable young girls and women (from the2nd cohort of the year 2022) to discover and choose an apprenticeship trade, the day of March 11 was used to observe first-hand the progress of apprenticeships with the 2021 cohort placed with Master Craftsmen (weavers, seamstresses, hairdressers, electricians, etc.). After a month’s apprenticeship, the overall progress was good, as evidenced by the motivation of the master craftsmen, the regular attendance of the apprentices and their love for their chosen trade. Indeed, as can be seen from the pictures, the learners are already showing off some of their apprenticeship achievements, expressing their gratitude to the PROMESSE-FP project partners for the support they have received to enable them to learn a trade that will help them become economically independent.
As a reminder, these short apprenticeships of two (02) to seven (07) months (depending on the trade) are part of the training of 3,000 vulnerable girls and women aged 19 to 35 in promising and innovative trades in the project area. The PROMESSE-FP project covers the North, Centre-North, East and Sahel regions over a 44-month period. It is being implemented by the NGO consortium Solidar Suisse- Educo and Aflatoun International, with financial support from theDutch Embassy in Burkina Faso.
