"I once cared for an elderly person, and it wasn't smooth at all. Thanks to this training, I learned some skills of looking after the elderly, including relevant psychological characteristics and dietary rules. After training, I realized that the previous failure was mainly due to my lack of professional nursing knowledge," said Wang Shufang, who completed her course in a housekeeping service training base under the Women's Federation of Gansu Province on June 17.

Wang is from a registered impoverished household in a village in Huachi County, Qingyang City, Northwest China's Gansu Province. Her husband was seriously injured in a car crash, requiring Wang to do housekeeping work to support her family.

Wang said that it was useful for her to attend the housekeeping training course, and she could get along with the elderly in a better way in the future.

As a part of a housekeeping training project launched by the Women's Federation of Gansu Province, the training session was organized by the Women's Federation of Huachi County. A total of 54 rural women, including college students, women from impoverished families, and low-income women who want to get jobs or start their businesses, participated in the session. The training courses included 
maternal and child nursing, elderly nursing, postpartum meals and housekeeping services.

The Gansu Women's Federation started the housekeeping training project in 2004. About 151,000 impoverished women had attended the training sessions as of 2019. The federation plans to help 8,000 women who have completed the training session find jobs in and outside the province this year.

For Wang Xiaoxiao, a medical college student from an impoverished family whose tuition fees were all paid for by loans, the housekeeping training course helped better practice what she has learned in the major of clinical medicine in college. "The baby sitting and elderly care skills are very practical. The training session is helpful for me to get a job and repay the loans in the near future," said Wang. 

"I have thought about learning some skills before, but I didn't know where to learn, what to learn or how to find a job after I'd learned it. The training organized by the women's federation takes all these issues into consideration. It is a great opportunity and I'll study hard," said Du Jinlian, a woman in her 40s from a town in Huachi. 

Du works in a firm's canteen, and she earns fixed salary per month. She wants to learn more skills and get a job with a higher salary, to support her children who are studying in the universities. Du felt that this training session not only taught skills but also broadened her horizons, and she hoped to become a maternity matron in the future.

The Huachi Women's Federation has insisted on lifting impoverished women out of poverty through offering them housekeeping service training sessions and helping them get jobs in housekeeping sector. The federation has helped 633 qualified women find jobs in housekeeping sector in Beijing, Tianjin, Lanzhou and other cities since 2016, more than 80 percent of whom were from impoverished households. Their average monthly income has now reached more than 3,000 yuan (US $424.2).

According to Dong Fengling, President of the Huachi Women's Federation, the women's federations act like bridges connecting labor forces, training and employment market. 

"The staff members of the women's federations of townships and villages usually seize the best time when rural women are returning to their hometowns or going out for work before and after Spring Festival, to publicize the housekeeping training and mobilize the locals to participate in the training," Dong said.

"Affected by the epidemic this year, this work has been somewhat delayed. But in May, we trained 115 rural women and helped them get jobs in Beijing and other places. We will continue this work to help more impoverished and low-income women across the county get rid of poverty and become rich," concluded Dong.

(Source: China Women's News/Translated and edited by Women of China)