TEHRAN – On average, 15,000 female heads of households who have been under Iran Welfare Organization’s assistance, become financially independent annually through employment and entrepreneurship programs, director general of family and women capacity building office at the Welfare Organization has said.

Also, 9,000 women annually attend career preparation courses organized by the Welfare Organization and will be provided with the vocational skills for getting employed or running their own businesses, IRNA quoted Derakhshan-Nia as saying on Sunday.

Empowering the breadwinner women to generate income independently is among the main objectives of the Organization, she added.

In general, Welfare Organization is intended to ensure psychological and social empowerment of these women being the primary source of economic support for their families so that they can have an independent, higher quality of life, she said, adding, ultimately, empowerment is seeking to expand people's choices.

She further noted that urban and rural social insurance, generating employment opportunities and encouraging entrepreneurship for the target community, providing vocational skills, providing business capital, micro funding and poverty alleviation are among programs underway in the Organization.

Totally there are numerous temporary and permanent services provided by the organization, some include social assistance and support, and the others center on empowerment and social health, which ultimately lead to better life conditions for the communities, she explained.

It is worth mentioning that the family and women capacity building office programs do not solely include the pensioners, but some of them like capacity building schemes as well as micro funding are aimed at developing anti-poverty policies for vulnerable families, she concluded.

According to statistics released in 2017, there are around 2.5 million breadwinner women in the country, including 180,000 families, making up 500,000 people.

About 71 percent of breadwinner women have taken the responsibility of their families due to loss of their husbands.

Some 11 percent of breadwinning women are divorced, 10 percent are disabled or handicapped or have drug-addicted husbands, and about 5 percent of them are unmarried girls who are taking caring of their parents or their whole families.

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