“Gurriya, a mother of two daughters and two sons is married to a drug addict. The husband is unemployed and spends most of his days lazing around the house. The financial condition of the family deteriorated to the point where Gurriya decided to go around looking for a job. She was unsuccessful in doing so but was informed by a friend to reach out to CSC for a small loan.

At that time when Gurriya reached out to CSC, the Organization was in the process of implementing a Project named ‘Promoting Improved Livelihood for Informal Sector Work’. It was under this Project, that Gurriya received a loan, on the condition that she undertook extensive training on making shoes. The training developed her skills pertaining to design, colour matching techniques and marketing.

In no time, Gurriya was able to build upon her basic shoemaking skills and started making khussas. Later on, she started to train other girls and women in her community who were inspired by her success. Her breakthrough came when she was provided with an opportunity to display her products at an up-scale exhibition in Islamabad. Her stall was a success.

Encouragement from customers gave a huge boost to her confidence while the exhibition provided her with an opportunity to make linkages with the established players in the field. The exhibition gave her the confidence to deal with her struggles head-on. She has put her husband into a rehabilitation center where he is recovering from his addiction, her kids have started going back to school. Her business now receives orders from other cities and she has now hired the women she trained to cater to the needs of her successfully expanding business. The quality of life for her and her family has drastically increased and she is an inspiration for her community.”

Standing proudly over her bumper wheat field in a small village, Basti Sareen Wala, Dera Ghazi Khan, she says,

“Earlier on only the men in my family were called farmers, I am so happy that they have now finally recognized me as a Woman farmer too.”

Her crop looks better than anyone else’s around her and she is expecting to harvest a 1000 more kg of wheat than last year. This drastic change in her status has been made possible by employing new techniques for farming and seed preservation that she learnt from numerous technical support sessions and training programs run by CSC in the Districts of D.G. Khan and Rajanpur.

CSC has been providing technical support to women farmers in Rukhsana Bibi’s village on seasonal crop management for the last three years.