March 08, 2009

While there is the general consensus that awareness regarding women rights and issues has increased over the years, many people still feel that progress has taken place only in relation to the urban women and not much has changed for the rural poor. This is a largely correct conclusion but there are examples of the rural women gaining empowerment through the efforts of some dedicated individuals and organisations that fill one with hope for a better tomorrow for all women.

Sahibzadi is one such shining example of a poor illiterate woman from Bhitshah, District Matyari, Sindh, who has progressed from an outcast to a micro-entrepreneur bent upon helping others like her. Last December she received the Citi-PPAF Micro-entrepreneurship Award 2008, an award that recognises the extraordinary contributions individual entrepreneurs make to the economic sustainability of their family and community. Thanks to the micro-credit loans that she got from Sindh Agricultural and Forestry Workers Coordinating Organisation (Safwco) — an organisation working for sustainable development of the poor in Sindh — she has not only been able to become financially sound but has also gained respect in her community and has become a symbol of the indomitable human spirit.

Sahibzadi, 24, contracted polio when she was six and walks with a pronounced limp due to a feeble right leg. The deprivation she experienced due to poverty was not as painful as the taunts and mistreatment meted out to her by people due to her condition. “People would call me jaddi (a demeaning word signifying unworthiness and weakness in Sindhi) and I would cry,” says the petite young woman who now has a smile on her face. “As it is life is so hard for a person who is a physically challenged, and society’s lack of understanding and compassion makes one feel like an outcast,” she adds.

She, however, does have a supportive family — parents and four brothers — and the spirit of a fighter. Some three years ago she decided to take charge of her own destiny and got herself enrolled in a sewing institute in Bhitshah. She had been making some money from doing embroidery on clothes and she used her savings to pay for the three-month course that cost Rs300 per month. But the physical cost of the effort was much more, as can be judged from what she says when asked about how far the institute was, “It was 300 steps away,” clearly indicating that each step must have seemed a mile to her. She often fell down on the way and hurt herself, sometimes bleeding from the knees and palms.

After mastering the skill, she sold off one of her two goats and bought a sewing machine and started stitching clothes. Around this time a team from Safwco visited her neighbourhood and when she heard them speak about their micro-credit programme and products, she knew an opportunity had come knocking on her door. With encouragement from her family, Sahibzadi met with Safwco’s representatives and expressed an interest in availing one of their microfinance schemes aimed at helping the rural poor, particularly those who are too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.

With Rs10,000 from Safwco, in 2005, and Rs2,000 from her own savings, Sahibzadi bought a buffalo-calf. She now started making a decent amount from stitching clothes for the neighbourhood ladies and selling milk, with her mother helping her look after the goat and the buffalo. By next year she had paid back the loan and took a second loan of Rs15,000 and bought three goats, and by the end of 2006 she had managed to save more than Rs20,000 from her two businesses!

Quite a business woman by now, when her second loan instalments came to an end in 2007, Sahibzadi took a step further and sought a third loan, of Rs18,000, and added her own savings to buy a milking buffalo for Rs38,000. Sahibzadi’s prosperity reflects in her confidence, a better living standard for her family and the respect that she has now earned from the very people who once humiliated and rejected her. Things have changed so much in the last three years that Sahibzadi is now getting a lot of marriage proposals, particularly since winning the Citi-PPAF Award for it carried a prize money of Rs150,000!

But Sahibzadi is not interested right now in spending her fruits of labour on her trousseau — she wants to open a stitching institute of her own and help other poor girls learn this skill and become financially independent and stable. “I want to open up a centre on the little piece of land next to our house. While I am ready to use the prize money to finance my dream, I still need more. In the meantime, I have bought another sewing machine and a girl from my neighbourhood is coming over to learn from me.”

So what is the major change that has come in her life since she took that first loan from Safwco? “Much has changed for me. Now no one calls me jaddi, I have become Sahibzadi, the darziani!” is a reply full of pride.