Sense Of Ownership

By Saima (HRD Coordinator KKA Region)
Saima is Human Resource Development Coordinator in Karachi Katchi Abadi project. Her job is to develop workshops for capacity building and skills training programs for women in the project area. Here is what she wrote of her experience in developing a small scale industrial home for women. This exemplifies our belief that people are capable of finding solutions to their problems and implementing them, given the skills and resources. In fact they will generate the resources as is evident by this example. We appreciate the hard work of HDF staff like Saima. These are people who are working in the trenches. Without their dedication HDF cannot carry out its mission.

Industrial home? Difficult task, where will I start? How’ll I manage? It’s very difficult to motivate and bring women to a single place. All these fears and concerns were arising in my mind before starting industrial home but... I found nothing difficult.

There were many reasons for starting an industrial home. Actually the objective of capacity building in real terms cannot be achieved if technical skills trainings are to be conducted in different DOs separately. It also involves management and monitoring problems. But conducting different trainings at a single place plus the availability of equipment like sewing machines etc will provide better results in terms of skills mastery, management, monitoring etc. Most important of all the objective of HDF is not to remain in an area forever, but to enable the community to run the training to run the trainings systematically and in a professional way themselves. So if a training center is developed at this stage, it will be easier for them to manage rather than managing training workshops in several different locations. It will also give them a sense of ownership.

There are 12 women’s Development Organizations (DO) are involved in this project. HDF encourages all the DO members to have a savings plan. So at this time the savings of various DO members ranged from Rs. 100 to Rs. 1300. But this amount was not sufficient to even buy one sewing machine. So the social organizer and I decided to go to each DO and discuss the plan of establishing a small industrial home with them through a participatory approach. I was surprised to see the eagerness and the shine in their eyes. All of them happily contributed their savings which came to about Rs. 15,000. This amount is enough to start a small industrial home.

Sewing machines were purchased from the factory at discounted price. One of the DO members (Sakina) in Adam Hangoro Goth gave two rooms on rent. In the beginning 3 different trainings which are basic garments, advance garments and beauticians are started. I found a very positive response in these trainings. The monthly rent and other remaining expenses will be paid out of monthly fee from trainees. In future the fee structure and different type of new trainings will be adjusted in such a way that this industrial home could meet not only the expenses but also earn profit. This will be done and managed by a management committee comprising of DO representatives and trainers. Now they will look after day to day business, monitor and decide sustainable future of this industrial home. We have just facilitated and guided them and they have taken it with real ownership. I am very much confident about its success.

A task which seemed impossible to me a month ago is now a source of pride and pleasure to me .Whenever I visit that industrial home I really feel proud and happy to see the bright eyes and smiling faces of the girls and ladies there .At the top and most important is the scene of ownership they feel…… I really cannot express in words.