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SKILLS TRAINING PROGRAMME"Unemployment creates powerlessness and dependency in women and makes children vulnerable to malnutrition and illnesses" Although Philani started out as a child health and nutrition project, we soon realized that the health and nutrition problems our local communities faced had underlying socio-economic causes due to lack of development opportunities. Development starts with people and apartheid left millions of women and men in South Africa without an opportunity to access formal education and training. Identifying a problemHalf of the adult population in Philani's target communities are unemployed, 70 per cent of women older than 18 years have no income, and 60 per cent of women attending the Philani Centres are single (Khayelitsha survey 1994, UNICEF). Lack of education, training, and employment creates powerlessness and dependency in women and makes children vulnerable to malnutrition and illnesses. Philani has tried to redress this and we have focused on creating and offering education and training opportunities to mothers.How the programme worksPhilani's development programme trains women in weaving, silk-screen printing and beading in our Nutrition Centres and at the Philani Development Centre in Site C, Khayelitsha. The women participating in these training programmes are mothers enrolled on our Outreach and Nutrition programmes, HIV-positive women referred from community structures, and women with social problems and children at risk.We are committed to making a venue and certain services available to women who have completed the skills training programme and want to weave, print or do beadwork from a central workshop at the Development Centre in Site C. Seventy-five per cent of income generated through sales at the Development Centre shop, orders and commissions, are paid to the mothers producing the crafts and 25 per cent is retained to cover material, transport, marketing and other costs. As well as skills training, the programme offers support and a way out of extreme poverty for mothers and, with the work of our health programmes, helps to improve the lives of thousands of malnourished children. Linoleum printingThroughout February 2007, Philani's silk-screen printers worked with two volunteers from the USA, to develop the women's artistic skills, by training them in the art of linoleum block printing. The results were exemplary, leaving the women not only with a new string to their bow, but with an invigorated feeling of artistic inspiration.
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