UPLIFT OF WOMEN
Although the women and children together make 66 percent of the beneficiaries, yet Karsaz Trust charted out an exclusive program for females. This program includes:
- Schools for Young Girls
- Handicraft School
- Poultry Farming
- Education to Adults
- Mother & Child Centre
- L.H.V. (Lady Health Visitors)
- Marriage/Dowry
- Text Books
- Supply of Water and Drainage
- Chokans
School for young girls
Keeping in view the rigid cultural tendency of the Northern Areas, the Trust opened schools for education, in two stages, to young and older women. The teaching of the Holy Quran, and the modern education ... of Urdu, Mathematics, Hygiene and Domestic Science are the syllabi of the stages I and II respectively.
Presently, there are only five schools in the whole of Northern Areas with 263 students on their rolls collectively. Although the number of the students is promising, we understand these schools are partially successful. Lady teachers are hard to find in these areas of strict social custom and those few available demand salaries we find hard to afford. Yet we continue our efforts with hopes we will succeed, God willing.
Handicraft Schools
We are running eight such schools including four bigger one in these areas. In these schools, each staffed with qualified teachers, there are 230 woman and girl trainees. These institutions train the females in tailoring, cutting, embroidery, knitting etc. to make them useful to their families. This training also helps them make savings and increase their incomes. Those deserving among the passing out trainees are given sewing machines free with advice to impart similar trainings to other female members of their families as well as the females of their localities.
Poultry Farming
The poor, married women are encouraged to set up domestic poultry farming as additional source of income. A financially depressed family is given ten hens on condition that they will rear those hens for at least two years or until their hoard assures continued surplus of eggs and meat for trade. At present, 20 families are maintaining domestic poultry farms.
The hens suffer from diseases. A proposal to train women having domestic poultry farm in a course of treatment to chickens is presently under consideration which we hope to materialise during the year 2001. The trained women shall also get kits of essential medicines. They will also be urged to make use of the acquired skill as a profession to supplement their incomes.
Education of adults
Some experimental centres has been opened and although they are functioning, the experience is not very satisfactory. The lack of sense of punctuality in attendance and the reason oriented works are major obstruction in education to the adults. These centres according to a plan under consideration, will be given sewing machines to become more purposeful institutions.
Mother & Child Centre
In the beginning, two such centres were started in Shigar valley of Baltistan (27 happy deliveries), but they had to be closed for some social reasons. Now efforts are being made to open such centres in other districts, subject to availability of funds and qualified persons for staff. In Gilgit, a Maternity home is working with the Medical care & Lab. of the Karsaz Trust.
Lady Health Visitors (L.H.V)
Wherever it is possible, trained ladies are asked for cooperation and training. However, two Lady Health Visitors are working at present: Beneficiaries = 185.
Marriage/Dowry
Financial assistance is provided to the parents of deserving girls for their marriage. In 1999, preference was given to donation of sewing machines, but assistance in cash was indispensable. In the years 1999 and 2000, parts of dowries and cash donations were given to 6 and 7 respectively.
Text Books
Like boys, the girls studying in primary classes are provided the text books of their respective classes.
Supply of water and drainage
Like it is in the country's other parts without community arrangement of supply of water into houses, the fetching of water from tanks, canals or reservoirs is included in the females house-hold duties in the Northern Areas while the males attend their business in the fields or the markets. Although water is in abundance in Northern Areas, the water drain in every village makes supply of the water twice or thrice a week. Wells or tanks are dug or constructed in the midst of houses and are connected with the water-drains for storage of water in them. Thus every house has source of water close to it.
Chokans
The construction of public latrines, dirty drains and ditches could only be the pattern of sewerage system, which was adopted. Construction of latrines, separately for males and females, proved useful only so far as the males were concerned. The progress, therefore of this project was slow in 2000, and expected to remain so.