BLISS kicked off its pilot project with the Afghan Turkmen population of Attock, Pakistan in October 2009. 38 girls between the ages of 14 and 20 are currently enrolled in BLISS.

The Afghan Turkmen community of about 38,000 carpet weavers moved to Pakistan after the Soviet War of 1979. As refugees, the Turkmen are at a serious socioeconomic disadvantage. State laws such as quotas for refugees in universities, lack of representation in the government, low priority in the job market, lack of official status in the country, and hostility from the native population have made assimilation a challenge. Their current profession of carpet-weaving is extremely laborious (12-14 hour work days), financially unlucrative for the weavers, and one of the worst forms of child labor. The Turkmen are sick of this profession but with little education and no other marketable skills, their options are limited. By virtue of its long hours, this profession creates a hard-to-battle opportunity cost which prevents their children, mostly girls, from getting an education. Despite 3 free schools in Attock run by the NGO Barakat Inc, attendance rates remain low.

The Turkmen are trapped in a cycle of poverty and illiteracy, breaking out of which requires financial intervention, at least in the short term.

It is not only school enrollment in developing nations, but also child and youth labor patterns that are structured by gender disparities. While poverty drives both boys and girls into employment, and both sexes also spend time on household chores, around one-fifth of boys are employed as laborers, compared to one-quarter of girls. In addition, 18% more male laborers than female laborers are able to combine their work with part-time school. The disparity reflects longer work hours among girls, a division of labor that leaves girls with greater responsibility for household labor and a greater weight attached to boys’ education. In addition, nearly 62% of out-of-school girls are unlikely ever to enroll, compared with 27% of boys.

Among the Turkmen chosen for our pilot project, a majority of the young laborers are female. The boys normally go out to seek jobs as street vendors, or work as apprentices alongside their fathers.

This is not withstanding the fact that at BLISS, we are all staunch believers of the girl effect.

The schools that BLISS has chosen for its pilot project are entirely free of cost for the students and are run by Barakat—a Cambridge-based NGO providing educational opportunities for various ethnic groups associated with carpet weaving in South Asia.

The schools run from kindergarten to 8th grade, and children learn Math, Science, Geography, History, Computer literacy, and languages such as English, Urdu, Pashto, and Darri. BLISS currently targets Barakat's evening school which runs for adolescent girls whose families do not want them to attend co-education.

More information on the schools can be found at Barakat's website at http://barakatworld.org/.

BLISS pays each participating student 2000 Rupees (roughly $22) per month for attending 2 hours of evening school and one hour of vocational class. This is a 60% increase in hourly income from when the girls used to skip school and weave carpets full-time.

The long-term goal of BLISS is to change community attitudes towards the usefulness of education by focusing on practical skills, financial independence and entrepreneurship. 

BLISS plans to supplement the existing school curriculum with its 'Business and Life Skills' module. The Business Skills curriculum will increase the relevance of formal education by offering business and livelihood training, with the aim of financially empowering the students even if they cannot afford higher education. The curriculum is being designed with the help of partners such as business professors at Pakistani universities, as well as vocational trainers. It will provide basic financial and business acumen, the ABCs of starting and running a business, access to job opportunities, and mentorship by small entrepreneurs and MBA students. In addition, BLISS will offer a Life Skills curriculum that focuses on hygiene, nutrition, gender rights, reproductive health, child trafficking, teamwork and social skills.

BLISS sells education and vocational skills as a bundle. We teach children that if they are literate, they will be better equipped to use available resources such as cell phones, newspapers, books, and television to learn about economic opportunities inside and outside their communities. They will be better able to network to market their skills and attain financial independence. They will be better parents, and will raise the next generation to be educated, socially responsible and financially empowered.

BLISS imparts skills that students can use for life, giving them a higher value for the time they spend in school. This model also makes learning fun, increasing the attraction of school for the children.

We hope that over time, the communities will see not only the benefit of the financial incentives, but also of the concepts and skills learned at school that prepare them to succeed in the real world.

Overwhelmingly enthusiastic! When BLISS kicked off this summer, there were more girls interested in joining the program than we could logistically and financially support. In the end, we picked 38 girls between the ages of 14 and 20 to join the program. We enforced a first-come, first-serve policy, giving priority to girls who were of school-going age. Since then, the school staff has been getting requests for new enrollments from never-been-schooled girls every day.

It has been especially rewarding to see girls who had never attended school before join now because of the incentives BLISS put in place.

BLISS works with communities that are eager to break free of the financial bondage they have to their professions. For example, in our current target community of Turkmen, women, girls, village elders, and young men alike have told us time and time again that they want to find alternative occupation, but have no other marketable skills to speak of.

The goal of BLISS is not to completely replace the community's old profession with a new one, but to increase school attendance by lending the community a helping hand. In most cases, this will mean monetary incentives to convince families to send their children to school instead of work, and practical skills training to ensure continued attendance and long-term benefits.

Yes. We believe that the best way to make a community self-sufficient is to give it control of its own destiny. One important metric of our success is what the community will default to once we stop 'hand-holding'.

In an effort to facilitate a smooth transition, we have hired a Turkmen as the Project Manager for BLISS, to oversee the logistics of buying and storing raw material, and interfacing with the local retailers. We have also hired a local to supervise the printing of the embroidery motifs on fabric, and its timely supply to the students.

We plan to gradually move the designing and marketing of the crafts to the girls, helping them experiment with embroidery motifs, create their own designs, and find their own markets.