Women of Village Bahadur Jalbani Made it Possible
The barren land of village Bahadur Jalbani’s district Sujawal sows the unending seeds of poverty; where people are deprived of basic facilities, economic opportunities are not available and education for girls is an unfulfilled dream. The women of Sujawal came together and formed a Community Organisation (CO), under European Union (EU) funded Sindh Union Council and Community Economic Strengthening Support (SUCCESS) Programme. The women are striving together to bring a visible change with small self-help initiatives. Pondering over girls’ education in a general body meeting, a CO member shared that there are only two government schools in the area; one for girls and boys each. The school for boys is functional, whereas, the school for girls has started to look like a haunted house with its damaged walls and wild bushes covering its playground. The CO President remarked that, “we must stand up against this discrimination towards girls’ education and take the education department on board to resolve this matter.”
A member of the CO shared that, “before this we used to sit together in various cultural and social gatherings but never talked about our issues like we did today”. While another member added that they believe, “the state departments have the ultimate responsibility to provide these services but they take very few steps to attend to our issues”. In the first ever meeting of the CO, the members discussed several development issues they face and decided to take actions to resolve them; the first one being making the girls school functional. Another issue brought up was the women’s access to water as they were primarily responsible for fetching it from far-flung areas. Most of the women also did not have their CNICs so it was important to create linkages with NADRA and arrange mobile camps for them. The CO members collectively took these initiatives on a volunteer basis to help themselves. In this regard, the women initially gathered a donation of 400 rupees from each member to clear out the bushes from the school playground. A member of the CO volunteered to be a teacher until the deputation of a government appointed teacher.
Only 12 girls showed up on the first day of the reopening of the school. However, this number soon increased to 57 girls within six months with continuous efforts of social mobilisation and by holding sensitisation sessions with the parents by community activists and NRSP staff. The NRSP staff met the district education department, informed them about the reopening of the school by the community, and raised the issue of unavailability of teacher. Recently the district education department has deputed a teacher at the school. A CO member concluded by saying “This achievement works as a confidence booster for us and reaffirms our belief in collective action and that issues can always be resolved with coordinated efforts despite the barriers present”.