By JUDITH NAMUTOWE –

THE Foundation for Realisation of Economic Empowerment (FREE) has received 36,000 euros grant (about K277,200) from the Finish Embassy for the young womens skills training in Lusaka’s Ng’ombe Township.

FREE is a Christian women’s empowerment organisation which already has an established jewellery making project in Ng’ombe.

The project is focused on value addition for Zambian copper and semi-precious stones and had been successfully manufacturing and marketing the jewellery.

Economic empowerment advisor Dawn Close said the funds would help expand the project into gemstone processing and train more youths in the country.

“The grant is for skills training. We already have a jewellery project but this grant enables 10 of the women to start mentoring two others each for six months and then another two to make four.

This will increase the size of the jewellery project to nearly 50 women which will give us the capability of filling large orders from wholesalers and retailers abroad,” Ms Close said.

She said the grant also includes more equipment for the jewellery project to enable them process gemstones.

“We are making jewellery from copper and Zambian gemstones but we want to begin processing the stones ourselves as the supply is very erratic when sourcing locally,” she said.

The other skills training are for a computer lab associated with a library. FREE has been fundraising to send a 40’ container of books from the United States (US) to start a community library.

She explained that there would be a computer lab with 20 computers from which young women in the community would get training in keyboarding and internet use.

Ms Close said that the organisation was expected to train 120 women in the computer lab over the course of the year and that those who show ability would be selected for further instruction in spreadsheets, graphics, and web design.

The third aspect of skills training, was sewing which would centre on learning sewing skills and making marketable products for sell.