Development of society, assistance of poor families in Yemen [Archives:2002/39/Business & Economy]

BY MAHYOUB AL-KAMALI
YEMEN TIMES STAFF
The National Program for Society Development and Productive Families (NPSDPF) in Yemen works on giving hand to families living below the line of poverty. The program also works for integrating women in development through engaging them in training courses to be qualified and acquiring technical skills and professions, in addition to providing them information on processes of production and marketing to help them join labour market and establish income-producing projects.
Officials managing the program, founded under a cabinet decree in 1988, say it aims at preparing, planning and executing programs aimed for removing suffering of poor segments of the society, depending on field studies defining instances of poverty. The program is one of the constituents of the social security net and one of the projects on fighting poverty financed by the UN Development Program. It is affiliate of the ministry of social affairs and labour.
The program runs around 46 centers distributed around the republic and its activities include some rural areas and some districts. The program’s activities are mostly centered on handicraft jobs, sculpture, embellishment , sewing , hand-embroidery, housekeeping, light food industries, leather industries, carpets, carpentry, pottery, bee-breeding and poultry. Official sources also mention that the major goal of the NPSDPF is concentration on developing professions earning income to help the poor, especially women, to find job opportunities, whether at home or establishing productive societies and cooperating with the Social Fund for Development in the field of training. Both the UN Development Program, the Canadian Program for Development and the European Union support these activities.
Figures issued by the program indicate that the program has helped rehabilitation of 19 thousand persons to join the labour and production market despite its modest financial capabilities that do not exceed YR 140 million, mostly allotted for helping the destitute to come out from the circle of poverty towards labour market.
The NPSDPF, in order to expand in its activities in the rural areas, needs approximately YR 5 billion to be able to implement its plans and score positive results. The program has shifted its attention to folklroric professions and handicraft and to reaching to the areas where there are raw materials used in them. It tries to revive such professions, for instance pottery used in household needs. Officials of the program hope to be assisted by establishing a bank for the poor for funding some of its activities in fields of training, production and securing trainees rights.The officials plan for forming productive units in centres of productive families and other units for studying economic feasibility of productive families’ projects. The number of centres of the program is expected toincrease to 75 centres, 25 mobile units in addition to 27 thousand trainees at the end of the second five-year plan in 2005.
Following is table demonstrating programs and projects for fighting poverty:

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