PESHAWAR, Jan 4: A two-day provincial conference on solutions to women's problems ended here after holding discussion on hurdles faced by rural women and suggesting steps for overcoming these handicaps.

The event was organized jointly by the Peshawar and Islamabad chapters of the Aurat Foundation under the Information Network Centres (INC) Project, said a press release. A total of 53 INCs coordinators, drawn from 13 districts of the province, attended the moot.

Momena Arfeen, INC Programme Officer for Aurat Foundation, Peshawar, dwelt at length on the different projects being run by her organization to achieve the goal of women empowerment.

She said the conference was aimed at identifying the problems of the women groups working in the rural and semi-urban areas, finding out solutions to them and helping establish linkages of these groups with the people concerned to better their working. The participants were asked to enlist their problems and the steps taken for solving them.

The participants were divided into four categories and asked to enumerate the achievements they had made after getting information from the Mishal and Hamjoli publications of the Aurat Foundation.

Each group was handed two charts. The first chart had names of the group members while the second enlisted the achievements of various INCs coordinators. It was followed by presentations by the four group leaders.

Mr Aimal Khan, Coordinator for the Legislative Watch Program of the Aurat Foundation, conducted the last session of the first day of the conference. He explained in detail the political and administrative structures of the Local Government system and different committees working under the system.

He exhorted the participants to get linked with the authorities concerned to improve their working. Resident Director of the Aurat Foundation Rukhshanda Naz conducted the first session of the second day of the conference.

All the participants were divided into four groups and asked to write their success stories. All the members of the respective groups read out their stories in the groups. Every group selected with consensus one story and presented it to all the participants present in the hall.

Rukhshanda Naz told the audience that the stories would be published in a book form soon. In the resource mobilization session the participants were reminded that through resource mobilization alone they could achieve the goal of rural women empowerment. -APP