Who says women can only discuss gossip, fashion and recipes?

Women are capable of talking about much, much more. That's why you can start a women's group in your local Pakistani-American community to discuss the needs of women in Pakistan and what their sisters here can do to help.

Start off small. Gather a few family members and/or friends and begin meeting weekly in each other's homes. For each session, one person has to prepare a presentation about some issue concerning Pakistani women.

There are many topics to choose from, but some examples of women-focused issues include: Pakistan's atrociously low female literacy rate; the lack of breast cancer information available for women; the country's maternal mortality rate; the severe poverty many Pakistani women live in and its effects on their health.

To save time and allow for enough time for preparation, the group should decide before the beginning of each month which topics will be covered in the next four weeks and who will be preparing the presentations.

The person who is presenting needs to have as much material at her disposal as possible, so if she has difficulty finding news articles, books or other information, everyone in the group should help her find what she needs.

After each presentation, a question and answer and discussion period should follow. The key issue that needs to be brought up is: what can we, Pakistani-American women blessed with intelligence, wealth, education and talent, do to change this situation? What can we do to improve literacy amongst women in Pakistan, starting with our own families? What can we do to educate our sisters there about breast cancer and how to get help if they have it? How can we help curb the poverty that so many women and their families are living in?

While these questions are raised and solutions are proposed, one person in the meeting needs to act as the secretary and take all of these ideas down. They will be used at a later date. Generally speaking, try to make sure that notes are taken of what took place at every meeting. This information, what can be called the minutes of the last meeting, should be distributed to everybody at the following get together.

In addition, each group member is required to discuss the information presented in the meeting with another female. This can be a family member, friend or acquaintance in America or in Pakistan. The group member should get feedback and ideas about the topic and what can be done on a concrete level about the problem. At the next meeting, these new insights and ideas should be shared and noted in a brief recap session of the previous meeting or while going over its minutes.

By doing this, group members can share this important information with other women who cannot attend the meetings while increasing the pool of insights, ideas and solutions to deal with the problem discussed.

After a month of these presentations, the group should choose one topic that has been discussed to start working on. For example, the women can translate literature available in English about breast cancer into Urdu, get it printed and then send it to relatives and an organization in Pakistan which can distribute the information to those who need it. Or they can work on collecting funds for needy women and their families in Pakistan which will be given out through an agency there. They could also work on collecting funds to support a girls' school in Pakistan.

Whatever project is chosen, work on it should ideally last no longer than a month. In this time period, the weekly meetings, instead of focusing on gaining information and discussing solutions to women's problems in Pakistan, will now be used to complete the project chosen by the group.

The advantage of this system is that it combines group members' knowledge, skills and desire to help with concrete efforts and results. If all goes well, group members will not only be doing good for their sisters in Pakistan by following through on the project, but they will also gain confidence of knowing that they too can use their talents and abilities to make a positive difference in the world.

If your group begins to attract attention and gain more members, start focusing on bigger projects that require more human resources, effort and money. Whether it's building a girls' schools, paying for mammograms for women in a Pakistani hospital or free health checkups of women and children in a specific village there, the group will now be able to use its talents to impact the lives of Pakistani women in a bigger way.

Your group will have succeeded in providing a way for Pakistani-Americans to give back to Pakistan and help women in need over there.

Some ideas for topics to cover in the meetings
1.Women and smoking in Pakistan
2.Domestic violence in Pakistan
3.The low rate of female literacy in Pakistan
4.Maternal mortality in Pakistan
5.Nutrition and Pakistani women
6.Alcoholism in Pakistani families and its effects on women
7.Focus on specific projects that are helping women in Pakistan so that the group can support their work (i.e. Human Development of North America's programs)
8.Breast cancer and Pakistani women
9.Diabetes and Pakistani women
10.Disabled Pakistani women
11.An analysis of women-oriented magazines and newspapers in Pakistan
12.Women and self-esteem in Pakistan
13.Pakistani women and harmful cultural practices

Date/Time Last Modified: 6/17/2002 3:49:12 PM

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