International development NGO, Mercy Corps, is partnering with a local organisation established last year in Sichuan Province’s Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in a new initiative to improve life skills and livelihood opportunities for teenage, ethnic minority girls who have grown up in an area ravaged by poverty, drug use and AIDS.

The USD 800,000 project, funded by the Nike Foundation, aims “to equip and empower Yi adolescent girls with the life skills, health and economic options necessary to cope and move beyond the challenges of urban migration and the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic,” according to an August update from Mercy Corps.

Mercy Corps China Program Officer, Kate Janis, told China Development Brief that the project will focus on 14-18 year olds who, in the project county of Zhaojue, have typically completed only 1-3 years of primary education. “Many of them don’t even know how to hold a pencil properly” said Janis.

The area has experienced a localised AIDS epidemic owing to widespread injecting drug use among young men, and in response to this the project’s informal education “will include a major health component,” according to Janis.

Also on offer will be vocational skills training in areas such as animal husbandry and traditional handicrafts. Janis sees the latter as a way of keeping local skills alive—since “a key element here is to encourage preservation of their culture”—but stresses the importance of linking handicrafts production to viable markets.

She hopes the project may in time lead to the formation of some producer cooperatives, and also open access to microfinance through the local Rural Credit Cooperative, but believes it is essential to start by building basic skills so that the young project clients will be in a stronger position to make use of such services.

At the same time, a major aim of the project is to build the capacity of the local NGO partner, the Liangshan Norsu Women and Children’s Development Centre [1], which was launched in March 2005 and has since been re-named “Liangshan Yi for Empowerment.”