PESHAWAR: A young woman from North Waziristan tribal district has recently opened a handicrafts outlet here in Saddar Bazaar to promote local culture.

Sadaf Wazir, the woman from Waziristan, told this scribe that she also wanted to help out women artisans involved in making different handicrafts. She said that some time ago when she was doing MPhil from Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, a novel idea struck her mind to launch a store for marketing handicrafts mostly of woman artisans.

She said that it enabled her to promote local culture as well as make woman artisans earn a handsome amount for their precious handiworks, which had no specific centre before.

Ms Sadaf opened her dream sale point where models of more than 150 handicrafts were displayed for potential buyers. She said that she got inspiration from her university exhibitions where students from far flung areas participated in the events and displayed their regional handicrafts.

Wants to promote works of women artisans

The sale point displayed handmade shawls, embroidered dresses, bangles, caps, baskets, sandals, and household items made of variety things and materials.

“A novel idea of a store having different handicrafts items struck my mind and after discussing it with my family, I got a green signal and I conducted a survey and visited different KP districts where I discovered many woman artisans from Waziristan to Swat and came up with a mechanism to market their handmade items at this sale point,” she stated.

Ms Sadaf said that during her survey visit, she had come across many woman artisans, who had no source to market their handmade produces so her sale point would help them out financially. “I don’t have enough space to display all the items but I am quite sure that woman artisans can earn handsome amount once their handicrafts get marketed where potential buyers turn up,” she added.

She said that local culture would be promoted and persevered in that way. She said that it would also empower poor woman artisans. About her future plans, she said that she wanted to get connected to woman artisans across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and also wished to have a special shelf for specific handicrafts so that poor woman artisans could be duly supported.

“I would approach welfare and culture departments to provide me with enough space for display and training woman artisans to get connected to sale point for marketing their handmade products and also online promotion,” said Ms Sadaf.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2022