KARACHI, April 12: Speakers from different spheres of life paid tribute to journalist and former BBC producer Durdana Ansari at an event held in her honour at the Manzar Akbar Hall of the Arts Council on Thursday. Eminent writer Hasina Moin presided over the programme.

Durdana Ansari spoke in detail about how, after her 22-year stint as a journalist, she joined the Ethnic Minorities Foundation (EMF) and the British government awarded her the Order of the British Empire (OBE). She said she came to Pakistan to cover the 2005 earthquake for the BBC World Service and traveled to the affected remote areas. When she returned to England, some British parliamentarians asked her to go back to Pakistan on a special project and help Pakistani women. Subsequently, the 7/7 incident happened in England after which she was asked to work with the EMF. She was nominated as the project director. In the first year, 100 women were taught basic IT and English.

The women who she felt were the most reluctant to join the project were of Pakistani origin. They would attend Dars instead of EMF classes, which made her (Ms Ansari) to go to them and sit with them during the Dars. Eventually she was able to convince them to acquire basic education.

Within the span of eight months, some 900 women joined in, she said. When the government sought to put an end to the project, she requested it to continue the campaign as more women wanted to benefit from it. Consequently now, she claimed, there were between 3,500 and 4,000 women acquiring education under this project. She said the award (OBE) did not belong just to her, but to the whole team that worked alongside her.

Ms Ansari rounded off her speech by reciting an Urdu couplet:

Ab waqt aa gaya hai ke saahil ko chhor ker Gehrey samandaron mein utar jana chahyey Hasina Moin said women were God’s gift to the world and Durdana Ansari was a proof of that. She said there’s a Durdana Ansari in every woman, we only had to find her. “We in Pakistan should also educate our women and create awareness in them about their rights,” she added.

Farhad Zaidi praised Durdana Ansari’s efforts and said getting the OBE was not just her achievement but of the whole of Pakistan. She had made Pakistan and herself proud, he remarked.

Idrees Bakhtiar, Qudsia Akbar, Khursheed Haider, Nadeem Zafar, Iqbal Latif and Fatima Surraya Bajia also spoke. Samina Kamal anchored the event.