US Department of State has extended its contract through the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (BPRM) to Hashoo Foundation to improve employment opportunities for Afghan refugees, especially women, by training them in employable vocational skills applicable in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Under the project, titled ‘Skills Training and Income Generation for Urban Afghan Refugees’ Hashoo Foundation will train 300 Afghan refugees in Rawalpindi and 550 in Peshawar over a period of 12 months. The majority of the Afghan refugees living in Pakistan are unskilled, with little to no formal education. They are not allowed to receive skill trainings from Government owned technical institutions and are unable to afford private sector training institutes. As a result, these refugees have no way to acquire any professional skills and are forced to find labor work on daily basis on very low wage rates. 81 % of the respondents of the program are facing the problem of food insecurity.
