ANJUMAN TARAQQI-E-NISWAN

SELF-EMPLOYED WOMEN'S FUND

(A Project of Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Niswan)

Karachi, Pakistan

 

Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Niswan(ATN) was established on March 8, 2003 with the following objectives:

 

1. To organize urban and rural women.

2. To promote women's traditional and home-based work and to help them earn better living.

3.  To raise awareness among women of their rights and responsibilities and to prepare them to struggle for their rights.

4. To improve and create better opportunities for female education.

5. To help working women to get proper payment and position equal to men.

6. To struggle for women's economic emancipation and elimination of gender bias in the society.

7. To help women acquire education and job outside their home.

8. To help women gain decison-making power.

9. To develop self-reliance among women.

10. To help women gain freedom to spend to spend their money as they like.


By taking up these objectives the group of college and university teachers, social workers, feminists, students and self-employed women groups laid down the foundation of ATN with this aim that women can be "an agent of change" in Pakistani society and their work should be done by women themselves. In view of this on Saturday the 8th March 2003 is declared as Youm-e-Tasis (Foundation Day) of ATN.

MEMBERSHIP RULES

1. Any women can become a member who is associated with any profession, skilled, mature and willing to do work, has the knowledge and understanding of daily affairs and follow the rules and regulations of the anjuman.

2. To become a member there is no restriction of education, language and religion.

3. Member woman should play a distinctive role in the development of the anjuman.

SELF-EMPLOYED WOMEN'S FUND

Self-Employed Women's Fund was established with the following objectives:

1. To provide education, information, micro-credit financing, technology transfer, and management skills.

2. To persuade self-employed women to form area-wise organizations and associations.

3. To select suitable women for loans in accordance with their skills.

4. To institute awards for the encouragement of the self-employed women.

5. To mount exhibitions for the display of these women's products.

6. To hold informative programs for the self-employed women.

7. To initiate various schemes for the betterment of the lives of the self-employed women and their families.

METHOD

 

Self- Employed Women;s Fund will provide loans to those women who want to start their own business or to those who want to extend their existing business. Advisory committee of the Fund will decide to whom loans should be given. For the time being loan is interest free but the self- employed women should arrange one guarantor at least. The loan must be repaid within the agreed period otherwise legal action could be taken. Loan seeking women would be divided into two groups each including five women. One woman from each group is selected through draw for giving the loan.



 

RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION CELL FOR SELF-EMPLOYED WOMEN OF KARACHI 12 FEB, 2010

This matter is not hidden from anyone regarding Pakistan's bad economic condition and poverty that women and even their daughters are fighting and straying all the time against them fearlessly.

Though it is a common observation that at present lives of millions of families living on the streets of Karachi are depending on the earning of women's hard work. However this cell is taking few important steps to authenticate this matter and improve the procedure. Out of these few important and vital steps are as follows.

1. Recognizing and identifying home based working women.

2. Research about these women in order to get actual facts and figures.

3. Establishing a separate cell to continue research process on permanent bases, where all researches in this   regard can be collected.

4. To promote information and material obtained from research on research and common level to prepare and publish books and articles.

5. Establishing relations with these women on permanent bases to encourage and strengthen economically home based working women.

6. Every year on women's day inviting these women as chief guest in university and displaying their work.


Karachi university among all universities in the country has privilege that HEC has started a program under the supervision of women's studies director Prof. Dr. Nasreen Aslam Shah in eighteen towns of Karachi to observe the progress of self employed women on higher level research material. This research is in its final stage. The most important aspect of this research is that two students are doing Ph.D on this topic, and it is noticeable that these research articles in Pakistan will be the first Ph.D of their kind. Dr.Shah has already published a book and important articles on this topic. Other than that  directory is published about these women. Which contains personal professional details about these women, all these efforts of cell are not just restricted to educational and research. Most important and basic aim of the cell is to bring practical change. For this purpose our targets to make our efforts effective as follows.

1. To give important information to self employed women in the cell and starting training courses in their areas. 


2. To give important information regarding health and provoke them towards education.

3. Policy making for the protection of self employed women on governmental level and try to implement existing laws.

4. Basic goal of research activities is the improvement of self employed women, increase in their income, and to improve them and of their family's health and standard of living.