DAWEO! Empowering Afghan Women​

In 2012, Danner began its work by partnering with the country’s most progressive women’s rights organizations, which together run the 27 WPCs in 22 provinces of Afghanistan. Over time, the necessity of a closer working relationship and linkage to state actors to ensure a more holistic approach to bettering the service delivery for female survivors of VAW in Afghanistan became clear.
In 2015, Danner initiated a cooperation with state entities by providing capacity building trainings to ministry staff (Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs and Ministry of Women’s Affairs) and by facilitating dialogue and cooperation between civil society organizations and state authorities through joint strategic meetings on VAW.

A vision of a locally based organization was formulated already in 2014, and Danner focused its work on localizing the management of the activities in order to hand over the response to the office in Kabul. In 2018, the project management was officially handed over to the new-established NGO under the name of Danner Afghanistan Women Empowerment Organization (DAWEO).  

With securing the 10 years of background and overall vision, DAWEO continues the strategic focus on strengthening the work and capacity of professionals in the field of VAW in general in terms of professionalizing the methodological approaches and strengthening the professional network with relevant government and non-government entities. During the past years providing capacity building-trainings for the mentioned entities formed an integral part of DAWEO’s activities besides advocacy and awareness raising-interventions. So far, DAWEO conducted trainings for 8 WPC organizations (WAW, VoW, LSO,

ORCD, CAF, HAWCA, AWSDC) and three ministries of Interior, Religious Affairs and Women’s Affairs in, Kabul, Herat and Mazar covering nearby provinces. Based on 5 years strategy of DAWEO developed in 2019/2020. 

With the help of the United Nations Women’s financial support, DAWEO was able to launch WPC and FGC in 2021. All of the project’s actions were planned to support and shield vulnerable women and those who required counselling in both the legal and psychological realms. The project was carried out in the province of Bamyan, but unfortunately, DAWEO’s operations were halted until May 2022 with the fall of Kabul and the change of government.

In June 2022, DAWEO was able to pick up where it left off. Due to the project’s implementation in the province of Bamyan, DAWEO changed the project’s nature and name. By doing this, we were able to move forward with the project somewhat in accordance with the Islamic Emirate government’s policies and regulations and circumvent their reasons for not allowing the family resource center to open. The FRC Bamyan is still active in a number of educational fields, including reading, English, math, Islamic education, health, legal awareness training, and vocational training in the garment section. DAWEO also runs programs in the area of psychological counselling. So that DAWEO’s family resource center offers beneficial services to women and their families.