by Asma Zia and Tehmina Ahmed

Shahida Memon is an unusual woman. City bred, college educated, willing to live with village women the way their lives are lived. Sleeping out in the open among hordes of mosquitoes, being attacked by dogs in the village, eating what the village women ate, sitting with them, hearing about their lives as she told them about her own. It's not surprising that Shahida managed to make a breakthrough with the women in a project where others had worked before her, to not much avail.

Shahida works for the Sindh Rural Workers Cooperative Organisation (SRWCO) in an ILO sponsored project entitled "Employment Opportunities for rural women through organisation." While projects aiming at rural development are often handicapped by the urban bias of their consultants, the SRWCO depends on its rural network to tackle problems at the grassroots level.

Shahida came to the project with a Masters degree in Commerce from the University of Khaipur and some experience of organisation at the student level. She had never lived in a village before, but has been in her own way a trail blazer. One of eight children brought up in small towns across Sindh, she is proud of the fact that she became the first woman to be awarded a Masters degree at Khaipur University.

She is also the first girl in her family to take up employment outside the home. Her unusual lifestyle brings her up against social pressures — these she manages to resist with the courage of her own conviction and a growing commitment to improving women's lives at the village level.

After initial training and orientation with the SRWC, Shahida was introduced to the project area. Initially she was baffled by the suspicion and hostility she encountered. Undeterred by her reception, she set about her task, concentrating on breaking down the barriers she felt existed between herself and the women of the village. While they cooked and did other household chores, she would talk to them about their problems and about the need to organise in order to look for solutions. Getting no attention, or at best dismissal, she went from house to house for months on end before it became evident that her patience and her persistence were paying off. The same women who had been suspicious of her now greeted her with smiles and laughter. They began to accept Shahida as of their own, to communicate their problems and to think in terms of working solutions.

In the short span of a year the project has taken great strides forward in stimulating a direct and genuine involvement on the part of the village women.

Shahida's initial efforts were focused on women belonging to villages where there is now a women's organisation that holds weekly meetings to discuss problems and plan strategies to work towards common solutions.

The women identified the lack of health facilities, the absence of schools in the villages and low income generation as their primary problems. Through resources mobilised by the project, a start has been made towards the solution of these problems.

Through the building of hand pumps, safer drinking water is now available. In the interest of hygiene, latrines have been constructed in the villages.

A school for girls started by Shahida in Ahmed Khan Baloch village now has fifty students. Shahida herself taught at the school: now one of her pupils teaches along with her. There was great resistance in the village at first to the idea of female education but the school has now become an accepted part of its life.

In terms of income generation, efforts are being made to improve the marketing of products already being made by the women as well as to identify new ventures that would prove feasible in economic terms.

In terms of mobility, the women of the village have come a long way. Women who had never been 'allowed' to go as far as the town of Sakro came all the way to Karachi to participate in the Women's Action Forum (WAF) Mela (a kind of fair). On going home they declared their intentions to celebrate their own Mela.

The women, the project and what it stands for — all these things have a long way to go; for her part Shahida is determined to stand by the women of the village as they make their journey.

Source: Shirkat-Gah SUBHA 1, Bath Island, Karachi Pakistan