Watch us in the evening news....

As all of our class trickles in from the International Public Service projects, Channel 11 news decides to air three of the projects from the Clinton School students on their 6:30 pm news.

Our International Public Service Projects in tonight's news

Worst Floods of the Century

I reached home safe and sound but my heart is still in Pakistan where millions are facing yet another crises......

Pakistan has a traditional moonsoon season during july and august when strong seasonal winds blow from Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, bringing heavy rains to the region but this year's rains caused one of the worst floods of the century, killing hundreds and making several million homeless. Currently more than 20 million Pakistanis are displaced from their homes and more than 1/5th of country is under water.

Millions of people are homeless and hungry. But the outbreak of disease pose a new and great health risk to the floods affected population.

Clean water and sanitaion is one of the biggest issues currently.The spread of imminent water born diseases like cholera, pneumonia, diarrhoea, dengue, hepatitis, malaria, etc is the current challenge that needs to be conquered asap.

Death Well Show

I remember going to see these Maut ka Kooan (death well) shows in shabby wood-panelled temporary wells with my father when I was young. A few times I have been so scared especially when I saw a show with one car and three motorbikes in the well. The walls were so fragile that they would shake consistently as the car drove on the walls.

I was passing this festival when I saw the signs and you all cant imagine my excitement, especially because I get to show my children one of the fun/scary things I have experienced in my childhood. The worst part this time was getting up on the side of the well. These were the shabbiest stairs with no side railing and huge gaps in between. I climbed every step remembering David's adventure on the staircase in the House of Shaws (in Kidnapped by R.L.Stevenson).

Saawan Mela (festival)

Reminders of childhood...attended a public festival past week with rides and food and animals and circus etc.etc.

Clothing and handicraft stalls where most of the products were made by local women artists and workers.

A small girl selling kids snacks. She got so shy when she saw the camera...

Shopping, shopping, and more shopping...

Pakistan National Monument

Past weekend I traveled to the capital city, Islamabad, with my kids to meet family and friends. 

Islamabad has lots of beautiful places to visit but this time the main attraction was the Pakistan Monument as it was built in 2007 and I did not get the opportunity to see it before. The monument is spread over a total area of 2.8 hectares. The high location makes the monument visible from across the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. 


The Pakistan National Monument represents the nation's four provinces and three territories. The four main petals of the monument represent the four provinces, while the three smaller petals represent the three territories (Gilgit-Baltistan,Azad Kashmir and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas).The blooming flower shape of the monument represents Pakistan's progress as a rapidly developing country. 


The inner walls of the petals are decorated with murals. The central platform is made in the shape of a five-pointed star which is surrounded by a water body. A metallic crescent surrounding the star is inscribed with sayings of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and poetry of Allama Iqbal. The Monument has been designed to reflect the culture and civilization of the country and depicts the story of the Pakistan Movement, dedicated to those who sacrificed themselves for future generations.

From air the monument looks like a star (center) and a crescent moon (formed by walls forming the petals), just like the star and crescent on Pakistan's flag.

Hijras: the third gender

Once during our field interviews, we came across some guests of a client who played some traditional instruments and sang for us.


Ryan if you are reading this post; remember our discussion on the third gender and how they are outcasted and  confined to the fringes of the society in very specific professions. 

  

I recorded this video while they sang for us. The three musicians in the back are men but the two singers in the front are hijras. 

The hijras (meaning eunuch or hermaphrodite) are an ancient community in the Indian subcontinent; now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan. They are classified as the third gender, an identity separate from men and women, considered neither completely male nor completely female, also having their own specific gender role. Some hijras are born with intersex variations, others could be physiological males who have adopted female gender identities. Few also have been converted into eunuchs by emasculation or castration of their genitalia. 

Once they used to have a high status in society but the British rulers in colonial India stripped the hijras of the laws that granted them the protection they received under Mughal rulers and regarded them as a menace to society. Now most hijras live at the margins of society with very low status, mostly sex-workers or low level entertainment artists performing at functions. They are rejected by their families and are the victims of extreme social ostracism. Few employment opportunities are available to them. Many get their income from sex work, performing at ceremonies, or begging. Violence against hijras, especially hijra sex workers, is brutal. And as with the transgender people in most of the world, they face extreme discrimination in health, housing, education, employment, immigration, law, etc.

For the past 20 years, many NGOs and hijras themselves have been working and lobbying for their rights especially for official recognition as the third gender. A remarkable step has been taken for the welfare of this marginal community by the Chief justice of Pakistan in Dec 2009 when he ordered that national ID cards be issued to the members of the hijra community showing their distinct gender. 

The tong, you see in the picture is a traditional percussion instrument in South Asia. It is generally 2.5  to 4 feet long and is used individually or in combination with other musical instruments for bhangra music or folk songs.

Meet Kainaat at Mitchell's Fruit Farms

I would like you all to meet Kainaat, she is almost 12 and has one of the happiest smiles I have ever seen.

Its always hard to find women clients at home because they would be working in the morning. In the last village I was conducting interviews; several women work at the Mitchell's Fruit Farms, a very large food manufacturers of jam, jellies, pickles etc. (like Smuckers in U.S.) I decided to go to the factory and interview some of them there. I wasn't able to go inside the factory without prior authorization but I did tour the fruit farms outside, where they grow the apples, oranges, mangoes, plums etc to be used in their products.

Outside the factory gates, there was a huge tent where several people were sitting and cutting fruits with large cutters and choppers, talk about cheap labor...  families working together just sitting and cutting fruit from youngest to the eldest, they spend their whole day chopping fruit from the farms, then put them in large bags that carry 1 maund (82 pounds) each. I asked the women how much they make in a day. She said they average anywhere between 2 to 3 bags full of cut fruit in day and get paid $ 1.00 for each bag.

Thats where I met Kainaat's and her family. Kainaat is the same age as my daughter, Shahnur, who is in sixth grade and aims to be a scholar of comparative studies when she grows up. She also enjoys soccer and video games; and does arts and crafts in her spare time.

 

Whereas Kainaat had a large pile of fruit in front of her that she cuts with a 12 inch long cutter the whole day long. When not working she helps her mom in household chores and takes care of young siblings...

Kainaat served us unripe mangoes sprinkled with raw salt, with a beautiful and contagious smile.

Project Break Time!!!

OK, I really want to share this with you all, I am so proud of myself today, I finished 634 interviews with women clients. YESSSS!!!! 634. Can you believe it? These six weeks have been crazy, non-stop hectic work, from morning till night!! Time to take a break before doing the rest of them.

My host DAMEN has 48,000 women clients, basically women living on less than $2.00 a day and starting small business enterprise with the help of microloans. When I was asked by the Director to conduct an impact assessment study for empowerment of their clients, I was pretty happy beacuse they gave me full independence in terms of study design and scope. Plus institutional help in terms of a car, driver and 2 full time interns (fresh MBAs) for busy work. The project is very important to the client because they have been thinking for a long time to assess their impact through an independent consultant, and obviously a Clinton School student working free of cost was very ideal! and I was also very excited to get such a strong project and the independence that I have in terms of designing and conducting it.

As I started working, I had to decide what exactly I need to measure and what I want to measure. Looking at the best practices I saw income changes and control over financial resources when people were measuring gender empowerment. They also looked for control over savings and political empowerment, but how could we measure empowerment without looking at what is happening inside the house in terms of gender relations between husband and wife, a woman's control over her leisure time and fertility. We had long discussions with the research department at DAMEN about how empowerment should be measured. The norm in microfinance organizations here seems to be case studies which is pretty detailed but cannot be generalized for thousands of clients. Surveys are time consuming and difficult to conduct for these women who are mostly uneducated.

After much research, debate and thought, I decide to survey 2% of the DAMEN's active clients: 1147 women and planned to measure all the aspects of empowerment. The control of a woman over her time, income, body, fertility, her children's health and education. Her self respect and status in family and community, and the levels of abuse against her.

The best and the most complicated part of the project started with the actual interviews. The questions in the survey are probing and sometimes hard for the women to be specific about. I trained the interns for the interview process and literally we all are learning and improving our skills everyday. The NGO has 20 field offices each one serving many villages and I just finished collection of data from several villages being served by 13 field offices. Just 7 more to go...

This week, I will just stay in the headoffice organizing the piles of data collected and set up the SPSS spreadsheets for them. I will restart the interview process next week, hopefully the heat will subside a little bit by then and I will regain my strength.
Today I will enjoy reading all of your blogs...

...and the temperature was 48 C (118.4 F)

The heat was just unbearable today!!

Cant believe I grew up in this weather, or maybe it is the result of 15 more years of global warming, whatever the reason may be... its extremely hard to bear... especially when I have to walk in the harsh sun for hours, going door to door to meet the women I am interviewing.

Most of the villages I am travelling to do not have streets wide enough for cars. We reach a certain point where the road ends and one has to walk for a while in narrow alleys or through wide fields to get to the right home.

I interviewed over 20 clients today going door to door, which is normally a lot of fun for me, but today the temperature reached 48 C, the water I took with me got finished and there was no bottled water, juice, etc in the small village shops. By the time we got back after hours of walking under the sun, I felt sooooo nauseous, dehydrated, my cheeks burning, couldn't even see clearly. It was a BADDDDD day. And to make it worse tomorrow's forecast is not very pleasing either.. :(:(:(

Walking through the LYCHEE gardens...

Hey guys!!

I have been visiting lot of villages during my field work. But this particular visit was the most exciting. We had to walk through a small Lychee garden (owned by a small scale farmer) to reach a certain village.  A very different experience I must say.

He was kind enough to give me a few bunches on my way back. ;)

What am I doing here?

Well... I am supposed to study the impact of DAMEN, a development NGO providing small loans to 48,000 poor women arouund Lahore, the city I grew up in. They want me to evaluate if their loans are empowering women entrepreneurs alongwith providing an alternate source of income... something I always wanted to do, work with the young women in my homeland after sixteen years of stay in America, understand their lives and help them, definitely sounded like a dream come true!



Gender Empowerment, piece of cake, right! !



Well, not exactly!
Where to start from? Thought I was an expert.
What is empowerment for all these women whom I haven't begun to understand?
What does empowerment mean to them, living a few miles away from my home but decades apart from the life I live? How can I come up with some measures that would work for all these women, whose lives are as different as their problems are, who do not even understand that they have a right to have rights?

Lets start by getting to know them, spending time with them; thus I started travelling to the twenty field offices, each one overseeing the loan process for thousands of women in several villages.

Welcome to Pakistan!!!

Brief Facts About Pakistan

Official Name: Islamic Republic of Pakistan. (created 1947)

Capital: Islamabad.

Area: 796,096-sq. km.

Population: 172.80 million (2008 Census)

Ethnic Composition: 95% Muslims, 5% others

Per Capita Income: US $ 460

Currency: Pak. Rupee

Language: Urdu (National language), English (Official)

Archaeological Sites: Mohenjodaro 2600BC, Harappa 1500 BC, Taxila, Kot Diji, Mehar Garh, and Takht Bahi

Major Cities: Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Rawalpindi, Hyderabad, Faisalabad and Multan.

Minar-i-Pakistan, the most important national monuments of Pakistan stands at the exact place where the historic Pakistan Resolution was passed in 1940, seven years before the country's birth.  It is one of the few additions to a conglomeration of old monumental structures in Lahore, built by Mughals. The Minar expresses the spirit of that movement. The base of the structure takes the shape of a five point star and is enclosed within crescent shaped pools.