OESO has had two grants from USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) to do a number of specific activities.
Funds provided under these grants have been utilized to reimburse OESO for accomplishing the following objectives:
1) Improving household security of vulnerable families in Kabul by establishing home-based, wool spinning cooperatives for women to produce and market quality spun wool yarn to capitalize on the local demand for raw materials for rug weaving and knitting..
2) Improving household security of vulnerable families in Kabul through a two-phase project providing women with the means to locally produce and market hosiery.
3) Improving household security of vulnerable families in Kabul by providing training in viable locally marketable skills to 10-14 year old boys who are de facto head of household.
Programs
OESO has received generous support from many donors, individuals as well as foundaions -- from $10 to many thousands -- to help the women of Kabul in a number of ways. Here are a few of them:
* Supporting home schools for girls with salaries of teachers and books and classroom materials for the students.
* Helping wdows to get ration cards so they could get reduced-price food..
* Supporting Kabul orphanages with medical supplies and educational and vocational trainng programs.
* Arranging for the distribution of medical supplies shipped or brought from the States by donors to hospitals and clinics in Kabul.
* Helping to establish a number of widows in the silk weaving business, with training and equipment..
* Establishing a training program for orphans and poor boys using the stocking knitting machines.provided through donors to OESO.
* By opening an office/dormitory residence in Peshawar, Pakistan, so that OESO operations in Kabul can continue -- with female staff in both places and moving back and forth.