Impact Assessment of Skill Development Trainings Rendered by Punjab Rural Support Programme for Empowering Rural Women

The present study was designed to assess the usefulness, strength, weaknesses and participants recommendations for the Skill Development Trainings (SDT) rendered by Punjab Rural Support Programme (PRSP) for empowering rural women. The population for the study consisted of rural women only who were the members of Community Organizations (COs) of PRSP in district Faisalabad. A total sample size of 410 respondents was selected through a multistage simple random sampling technique. The data was analyzed using SPSS. The study revealed that the trainings provided by PRSP was considered useful by rural women and empowered them in certain areas as decision making, self-reliance and confidence building. The study further identified strengths, weaknesses and recommendations for the improvement of SDT. Though the SDT contributed a lot in empowering women still their impact on income generation is at satisfactory level. Need oriented trainings, opportunities of employment and provision of small enterprise is needed for women empowerment. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n4p2