Brave Beyond BISP aims to graduate the most vulnerable female members of society dependent on cash bails from the Benazir Income Support Program, into self-sufficient and fully functioning members of their communities.
Balochistan, a province of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, has confronted the challenge of conflict and militancy induced displacement. This has resulted in the displaced and hosting communities encountering a range of vulnerabilities due to the loss of livelihood and traditional social protection systems coupled with growing competition for local resources in the displaced areas. Women have been particularly affected owing to the death or conscription of their men into militant groups. For many, this has paved the way for them to assume leading economic roles, opening opportunities to navigate public spaces. However, these leading roles are very seldom accompanied by empowerment. This is in large part due to their weak social position, which is often exploited in the workforce. Women and girls bear an unequal burden of unpaid domestic responsibilities as well as overrepresentation in informal and precarious jobs.
Women also do not exercise the same rights as men owing to strict traditional norms and an extremely conservative society. This is evident from the rate of multidimensional poverty, the highest, while female literacy is one of the lowest. Additionally, women in Balochistan lack any control over productive resources like inherited land resulting in increased dependence on male family members. All these factors contribute towards women’s victimization, namely, increased economic insecurity, unpaid workload, domestic violence and abuse.
Project Implementation Stretegy
By enabling women with some skill in sewing and embroidery to hone their skills further through lessons on stitching and embroidery and equipment such as sewing machines, these women were able to learn to stitch and embroider kurtas (the predominant cultural dress) as well as make other cloth designs that they could later sell within their community. For women that partook in this program, being able to have a sense of economic agency in creating and selling their own designs led to a sense of economic (and social) empowerment, which was an important goal of this project. Additionally, for women in the kitchen gardening and poultry farming program, not only do the skills and lessons imparted help manage their land space more effectively, but the food produced as a result of their activities will first serve to eliminate hunger within their household, allowing them to be nutritionally secure. Thus, in addition to reducing poverty through social and income stabilization, the project also achieved short term peace through food security.
To ensure the women are able to handle their new skills and resources efficiently, participants were also given financial literacy and health sessions so that they could foster their small entrepreneurial projects but also manage their health appropriately. By strengthening women’s active participation in the economy, this project will eventually contribute to the region’s long-term peace and resilience and ultimately aim for gender parity within Balochistan. This is critical in order to collectively achieve global commitments to women’s empowerment and sustainable peace.
| S.nr | Course Name | # of Classes | Hours of learning | # of Participants | # of Facilitators |
| 1 | Sewing/ Stitching | 10 | 30 Hours | 15 | 3 |
| 2 | Embroidery | 10 | 30 Hours | 14 | 3 |
| 3 | Poultry Farming | 8 | 24 Hours | 10 | 2 |
| 4 | Kitchen Gardening | 8 | 24 Hours | 11 | 2 |
Health and Hygiene Session & Linkage building and Financial Literacy Sessions.
- Health and Hygiene.
As part of the plan two hours long sessions on health and Hygiene and Financial literacy sessions were arranged jointly for all the learners of the project. The session took place at Kaka’s Garden bringing all the participants together after their learning classes were completed. Dr.Bushra Lasi a professional local female Doctor was engaged for the health and Hygiene session. During the sessions the Doctor talked about the topics related to women’s health focusing on Reproductive health, Practices of Family planning and myths around it. The Doctor also touched the topics of disadvantages of early age marriages and importance of girl’s education in bringing up health families.
Sessions were kept open and engaging, women took active part in the discussion and shared their personal experiences related to complicated early marriages and reproductive health related issues. The sessions also provided a Q&A opportunity to the participants.
2. Linkage building and Financial Literacy Sessions.
Mr. Qaisar Roonjha International Facilitator and Executive Director of WANG was engaged as facilitator for the session on Linkage building and Financial Literacy. During the session Qaisar Roonjha highlighted the importance of skills with business market and understanding of basic financial literacy in local context. Facilitator highlighted available opportunities of business for women in local marker and shared potential areas of opportunities for local women to turn their skills they learned into earning business.
On Financial literacy participants were taught about the basic strategies of managing finances and record keeping. Participants also learned about methods of making small investments and finding out potential areas of partnerships with local business.
Graduate Ceremony of WANG’s Brave Beyond BISP participants. 50 women beneficiaries of BISP program went through WANG skill learning center’s four skill learning programs to get skills to become self dependent through their small ventures. At the closing ceremony held today at Kaka’s Garden we provided initial support to launch their own initiatives including sewing machines and other relevant stuff.
More pictures on WANG’s Facebook page
This project was a joint venture by Ms. Chanzé Ahsan and WANG under Project for Peace Initiative.
