RECENTLY I went to Dhabeji, a village an hour outside of Karachi in the direction of Thatta, to visit the Indus Bazaar, a day-long market held under the auspices of the Indus Earth Trust (IET).

With Princess Sarvath of Jordan as the official patron, formed under the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) and headed by Karachi-based architect Shahid Khan, IET focuses on community development in the coastal areas of Sindh and Balochistan: They have built tube wells, provided bio-gas, and used wind power to generate electricity in these deprived and underdeveloped areas.

The Indus Bazaar was held to showcase the IET’s latest project: to empower the women of the community of Dhabeji. Trainers from the IET worked for six days, imparting business skills to 200 women who possessed no confidence that they could lift themselves out of poverty, let alone run a business. They learned how to make their goods ready for purchase, price them, market them, and bargain with customers.

“When we started with the women, they wouldn’t even enter the shamiana where the training was taking place,” Khan later told me. “They would just sidle in, sit in a corner, cover their faces. They wouldn’t even tell us their names.” And yet these selfsame women — not just Sindhis but Biharis, Punjabis, Pathans — were now gathered to sell their wares at the bazaar, speaking easily with visitors, proudly pointing out the handmade embroidery and the intricate patterns on their goods. Each one urged me to leave my cellphone number with them, and they would make an item on order for me, as these were only samples for display.

There were cushion covers, bedspreads, and sheets made on variations of the rilli, the Sindhi handmade patchwork quilt in distinctive curlicued patterns with bold primary colours. There were ajraks, the beautiful hand-blocked cloths that are used as wraps, shawls, turbans, slings for babies, covers to sleep in at night (the children in the bazaar were wearing them thrown over their shoulders). Beadworked bottle covers, mirrored throws and wall hangings and home-cooked food were on offer in every direction — it was a dizzying riot of colour and texture and shapes.

Now that the initial training has been completed, the poorest women — selected by the community — who have undergone the training and qualified for the next phase of the scheme will be given microfinance grants of Rs15-20,000 to start their own businesses, and they’ll continue to receive support from the trust as they try to set up their enterprises. Two thousand women will be trained under the scheme, and it is hoped the number will be raised to 12,000 by 2014.

Another one of the projects is a Goat Bank, where women will be able to ‘borrow’ goats in order to increase their herds. “We found a woman who would soak discarded dry roti in order to feed her family,” Khan told me. “But with a grant of two sewing machines and two goats, she was able to make enough money to build a two-room house for her family. And fit it with a kitchen.”

Having worked successfully for 10 years on community development, there are plans to focus next on getting people, especially women, to understand their human and constitutional rights. “We’ve seen women who don’t even know what a nikahnama is, let alone possessing a national ID card.”

Khan explained his model of development to me, which he terms integrated development. “You see, most NGOs here only focus on one aspect of development — only houses, only hospitals, only schools. We were told at first that we should only concentrate on providing electricity. But I believe in trying to help a community with every aspect of life that it needs to function.”

This model of integrated development, according to Khan, is a process of evolution, where change will take a decade or more. “But you see, when the children see what’s happening around them, especially with their mothers, their attitudes will change.” Another positive effect of the model, Khan believes, is that it can prevent and reverse urbanisation. When young people who would otherwise leave for big cities see their villages being provided with electricity, water and sanitation, and concurrently see opportunities for income generation in their home environment, they elect to return to their villages; eventually they won’t elect to leave in the first place.

The Indus Bazar, although modest in scale, was a success in every way: a stepping stone to the greater goal of women’s empowerment in the community. Even though right opposite the tent was a huge mosque with the words ‘Jamaatud Dawa’ painted on the walls, everyone who came to the bazaar had thrown their support behind it, despite the fact that the women were in the spotlight.

Does this cause friction in the community between the men and women? “Well, at first the men were very suspicious. But when they saw the training we were giving the women, they agreed — perhaps because they hoped that the women would work and they wouldn’t have to!” The Trust circumvented this by opening bank accounts only in the women’s names, and some women have developed the courage to tell their husbands they can’t lay a hand on the money they have rightfully earned themselves.

The people of Pakistan are beginning to realise that keeping half of the country subjugated and suppressed is not the way to progress and development any more than handing out charity is the answer to long-term, sustainable uplift. Shahid Khan is convinced that economically empowering the poorest of the poor will have a trickle-up effect, transforming Pakistan’s economy from the bottom up. Whether he’s right or not, putting at least these modest tools for income generation in the hands of women is starting to look like the better bet for long-term success.

The writer is the author of Slum Child.

binashah@yahoo.com