Following his recent trip to
Pakistan, Dr Ajaz Ahmed Khan tells us about a very interesting project
implemented by our MFI partner AKHUWAT.
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| Guriya, who works in the Clothes Bank |
Transgender persons, or khwaja
siras as they are often referred to in Pakistan, routinely face a high level of
discrimination in access to health, housing, education and employment as well
as ridicule, intimidation and the threat of physical violence. Most khwaja siras are forced to
live at the margins of society and earn an income by dancing at ceremonies such
as weddings and births, and most commonly from begging. In an almost
unprecedented example of positive discrimination Dr Amjad Saqib, the founder
and executive director of Akhuwat, Lendwithcare’s partner in Pakistan, decided
when he established a clothes bank in May of last year to only employ khwaja
siras to sort, repair, clean and pack the clothes. Such regular employment
opportunities are almost unheard of for transgender persons. Akhuwat now
employs six full-time khwaja siras, namely Naghma, Naina, Guriya, Faisal,
Moshin Deedar and Guru Taj, in the clothes bank which is based in Akhuwat’s
head office in Lahore.
Although primarily an
organisation that provides interest-free loans to low income people to develop
their businesses, Akhuwat has in recent years initiated a number of other
programmes to improve poor people’s general well-being. For example, it established
a health centre that specialises in promoting better maternal health and
raising awareness of providing treatment for diabetes. It launched the clothes
bank in order to provide good quality clothing and other items free to poor
people who cannot afford to buy them. The clothes bank accepts lightly used and
almost new items such as clothing, shoes, school satchels, handbags, towels and
bed sheets from the general public. If required, it then repairs the items
before washing and pressing them and packing them into clear plastic bags and
distributing them free of charge to poor people. A typical family pack contains
one outfit each for one man, one woman and child. However, there are also more
formal, and often quite expensive, clothes such as suits and wedding dresses
with elaborate stitching and beading. The suits can be requested when someone
has a job interview or other occasion when they have to dress smartly. The
wedding dresses are requested some weeks in advance by prospective brides and
grooms. The clothes are distributed by each of Akhuwat’s 343 branches
benefiting an estimated thirty thousand people each month.
Although the whole operation is
overseen by Bilal Azam, the day-to-day work of sorting the clothes that arrive
in large cardboard boxes, repairing, cleaning and packing the items is
undertaken by six full-time staff, all of them transgender persons. The story
of one of the khwaja siras, Naina who is 36, is typical. Beginning when
she was still a child, Naina earned money by dancing at weddings and other
celebrations but as she became older the opportunities became fewer and she had
resorted to begging for one year before joining Akhuwat. Now Naina is the main
seamstress repairing any clothing that is slightly damaged and earns a regular
income working from 9 am to 3 pm five days a week at the clothes bank. Naina
takes great pride in her work and confides that as well as providing her with
greater economic security and increasing her dignity and respect, she feels
that she is helping other disadvantaged people to improve their lives as well.
Dr Ajaz Ahmed Khan
Senior Microfinance Advisor at CARE
International UK
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