In late June, IRD/Blumont Camp Coordination Camp Management (CCCM) mobile teams launched a sewing workshop for female IDPs at Khalidiya Camp in al Anbar province and a handiwork workshop for women at three other IDP camps in Salah al Din province in Iraq.
Twelve women in al Anbar and six in Salah al Din joined the workshops, which will continue until the end of December of this year. A camp-based female IDP in each of the provinces has volunteered to supervise and facilitate the workshop in her respective province.
The participants spend two to three hours a day at the workshops, improving and applying their handicraft skills. The IRD/Blumont office in Baghdad provides the participants, between 19 to 40 years of age, with the basic material they need on a daily basis. In al Anbar, the office provides spools of thread of different colors, needles, buttons, scissors, zippers and measuring tapes. In Salah al Din, the program office distributes balls of wool, and knitting needles among other things.
At the sewing workshop in Anbar, the participants make and repair clothes for women, and make mattress and fashion accessories like purses, necklaces and bracelets. The women have found a market at the camp where they sell their products to other female IDPs at nominal prices. Participants in Salah al Din make small rugs and the same accessories their peers make in al Anbar.
The workshops, which were launched after an IRD/Blumont survey at the camps that showed women were interested in such activities, are designed to enhance the women’s skills to earn an income and also to serve as a meeting point for the women to strengthen their social relations, shifting their attention from displacement hardships on to friendly chats.
The participants have already hailed IRD/Blumont for the workshops in which, they say, not only have they bettered their handicraft skills, but also made new friends.
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