Jalalabad, Afghanistan — January 9, 2006 — IRD’s Construction Trades Training Center in Jalalabad has achieved the nearly impossible: it has become self-sustaining in only 10 months.

“Not only are we helping the school continue, we also are able to improve the quality of construction projects in Afghanistan,” Victor Odegard, director of the CTTC, told his IRD colleagues yesterday. “By providing these much-needed construction services, the Center is sustainable after the initial USAID grant expires.”

Odegard explained that the Center now conducts three programs that help financially support the Center: first, the Material Testing Laboratory, which inspects and tests the quality of materials used in building roads and concrete construction; second, the Building Inspection Program in which teachers from the Center travel to building sites in Nangarhar province to inspect the quality of work on new and renovated buildings; third, Training Programs on construction-related issues for other non-governmental organizations. These programs are funded by the U.S. government and private construction contractors working in-country.

The Center is paid a fee for conducting these tests and evaluations and now has enough funds in the bank to continue when the grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development runs out in January 2008.

“We are hoping we can find donors willing to fund the establishment of training centers similar to the one in Jalalabad throughout Afghanistan,” said Odegard. “If we can start up these centers then there will be qualified workers throughout the country who will be working instead of becoming involved with the Taliban.” He also noted that sustainability is a strong incentive for creating more training centers.

Odegard pointed out that 90 percent of the graduates in the tradesmen programs have jobs when they leave the program, due to the large volume of construction funded by the donors in support of social and economic objectives.

The CTTC opened in March 2006 with a grant from USAID and the U.S. military’s Combined Joint Task Force/E, The Center offers the highest caliber vocational and technical training for both tradesmen and engineers, and offers classes in carpentry, electrical work, painting, masonry, steel work and construction management for site engineers and general foremen.

All tradesmen and general foremen classes last for 28 days; site engineer’s classes are for 14 days.  Each session begins with classroom instruction and concludes with practical, hands-on training in workshops where students practice their trade under the guidance of qualified instructors.