SWAT – The society for human and natural resources development Lasoona held a workshop on ‘building alliances to promote exports in embellished fabrics and up scaling of successful intervention’ under its UASID-funded project.
According to a press release, this workshop will provide opportunities to link women embellishers to exporters and other organisations or state agencies and also encourage local micro finance institutions to offer credit to women micro entrepreneurs for smoothly running their newly established businesses. Besides, the findings of an extensive value chain study on the embellished fabrics in Swat was presented to key players. The study was conducted in Swat by LASOONA and Entrepreneurs.
More than 50 representatives of key players in the embellished fabrics sub-sector participated in the workshop. These include representatives of district administration, social welfare department, PaRRSA, Kushhali Bank, Bank of Khyber, GIZ, RISE, NRSP, HUJRA, TDAP, WBDC, Swat commerce of chamber, WCCIP , Buyers , Whole sellers, Exporters, women embellishers & female sales agents (FSAs) from different UCs of Swat.
Azam Khan, Executive Director, Lasoona, presented his inaugural remarks and gave brief introduction of Lasoona. He explained objectives of Project and the role of important stakeholders involved in embellished value chain. He also informed the participants that after the conflict LASOONA implemented various project of Rs 1 billion.
Samiullah Khan, Project Manager, Lasoona said that the project in one year 6051 women embellishers and 194 female sale agents are identified and registered. 135 FSAs are trained on basic of business management, product development, costing and pricing. 3712 WEs are trained on basic of business management While3829 WEs on stitched work. So far 4,814 WEs sold 6211 value added products amounted PKR 2,485,074 and WEs are linked to national and local market through FSAs. He told that although women involved in embellished sectors are facing numerous problem but still there many opportunities exist in this sector, which must be exploited under this project.