Individual Member of the Month

Member Profile

The AWN has over 900 individual members who represent the diversity of Afghan women. We are NGO leaders and staffers, lawyers, doctors, housewives, teachers and students. In this section, we will profile an individual member each month to better introduce the world to who we are.

WAZHMA’S HAIR SALON

The individuals who are apart of the AWN represent many women within the Afghan refugee community. Increasingly members are also entrepreneurs who start small businesses in response to the economic conditions of living in Pakistan. These women support their families and add to the vitality of the Afghan community.

One such woman is Wazhma. Three years ago Wazhma left school to start working at a local hair salon to help support her family. After one year of training, Wazhma opened her first salon from her home in Peshawar.

Most of her clients are going to weddings so she offers a full-service salon. The types of services include: hair cutting, styling, perms, coloring, facials, makeup, face massage, henna applications, and threading. The business is growing as clients learn about her from each other and from the sign outside her house.

Feeling strongly a commitment to help others, Wazhma also trains other women for little or no fee. Currently, she has twenty students with five of whom come daily. They all sit in the small, one-room studio/classroom while Wazhma shows them the basics of styling and make-up. The students range in age from early twenties to mid-forties. When the business is brisk, the students help Wazhma with clients by performing basic services.

The students come to Wazhma’s classes for a variety of reasons. One young student explains how she would like to use her education in website programming to work at a marketing company or a bank designing websites. She knows that it is extremely difficult to find work in Peshawar for young women in this field and has decided to study with Wazhma. She hopes that learning hairstyling and makeup will lead to a job.

Other women come to the classes to learn the basics and do not hope to make a job out of it, while others dream of opening home based salons like Wazhma. Even though they may give her competition if they open other salons, Wazhma enjoys training them and feels it is her duty to share her knowledge.

Wazhma would very much like to open her own shop but does not have enough money to pay rent for a place. If she does open a shop in the future, she will continue the training out of her home as it allows for more privacy.

Like many women who are struggling to make ends meet, Wazhma never planned for this career. However she enjoys her work, and is eager for her business to grow. Ever the woman eager to learn, she wants to continue her education by resuming English classes and learning new and current styles.