An inspiring afternoon of rural success stories and celebrating our digital champions!
Aurat Raaj held a Virtual ceremony on Thursday, 30th June 2022, to celebrate the digital champions of rural Sindh who have, since April 2022, been working with us to educate the women and girls in their communities on 10+ reproductive health and safety topics through their listening parties with the help of our chatbot content in Sindhi. The efforts of these 50+ champions to raise and spread awareness have reached approximately 5000 women and girls across the districts of Larkana and Kamber in rural Sindh. The event also allowed us to show appreciation for all their formidable work by distributing cash prizes, mobile phones, and even a laptop, making sure that every champion felt uplifted and encouraged for their hard work and resilience.
The event began exactly at 2pm PKT on Zoom, where we were joined by 80+ participants, 4 of which were Aurat Raaj team members, Saba Khalid (Founder & CEO), Shaiwana Nisar (Rural Innovations Specialist), Alina Rashid (Co-Host), and Neha Haresh (Co-Host), alongside Samia Afridi from School of Leadership Foundation, Rabia Pasha from UNFPA Pakistan, our lovely champions connecting in from their villages, and some community members from each champion’s village.
The event (hosted fully in Urdu) started off with participants joining in, and as they were doing so, we wanted to hear one of our champions or their community members sing to get all the participants interacting and warmed up for the event, following which a young community member (champion’s sister) volunteered to sing a sindhi song.
The event then formally began with Neha giving a welcome note to everyone who joined, thanking all our partners and giving a very brief introduction of herself and this project Aurat Raaj started back in March. She then handed the stage over to Shaiwana, who gave a detailed project completion presentation that highlighted the scale of impact and the amount of women, girls, and communities reached in the span of April-June. After the presentation, Neha took over and played a minute long video for the participants made by her co-host, Alina, on the digital literacy workshops conducted in April of this year.
We then moved on to our Boriyet Buster Round, where co-hosts Neha and Alina played pictionary with the champions to entertain and engage them in a light-hearted and interactive manner. All present champions were divided into teams of 5, and six teams were formed with Alina on the whiteboard and Neha eliciting guesses. Irfana Soomro took the lead, guessing almost every drawing before anyone else, and single handedly earning 25 points for her team and leading them to victory. The other champions also made some great guesses and it was overall a very fun time for everyone present. Upon the completion of this game, Alina took over hosting and after quickly introducing herself, played a video called ‘Empower Women’, made by the UN Environment Programme to give the participants a perspective on how women are true changemakers and that problem solving can bring a plethora of benefits to individuals and communities alike, which is very in theme with the excellent work our champions have been doing these past few months.
Alina then went on to talk about how Pakistan’s digital gender divide, wherein internet access stands at 65% and mobile phone access stands at 51%. This served as a perfect way to introduce one of our champions, Uzma, as she took the stage to give her speech on the importance of digital literacy and inclusion. Her speech mentioned how being digitally literate has helped Uzma expand her business independently throughout several villages, communities and metropolises like Karachi, and that educating the women and girls in her community through listening parties on several reproductive health and safety topics has only been made possible because she was able to bridge her digital literacy gap.
After Uzma’s inspiring speech, Alina and Neha announced the first round of cash prizes. After quickly congratulating the winners, Alina proceeded to play a video on Mental Health Awareness, keeping in mind that one of the listening parties’ topics was Mental Health. This video was a great refresher, providing extremely insightful information and advice on mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression, and how one can seek help if they find themselves experiencing the mentioned symptoms.
Alina then took over to introduce the Youth Technical Support Consultant from one of our partners UNFPA Pakistan, Rabia Pasha. Rabia highlighted how, as per her work with UNFPA on reproductive health, she was extremely delighted and proud to hear our digital champions talk about how they’ve so effectively implemented the knowledge they learnt from their listening parties into not just their own personal lives, but also into those of the women and girls in their community. Rabia especially appreciated how the impact from this project is set to bring positive change for generations to come, after which she proceeded to thank and congratulate our rural champions, as well as the Aurat Raaj team. Our second round of cash prizes were then announced by Shaiwana.
After this very uplifting prize distribution round, Alina proceeded to invite Programme Manager and Project Leader, Samia Afridi from one of our partner organizations, School Of Leadership Foundation to say a few words for our champions. Samia talked about how Aurat Raaj is working extensively on reproductive health topics with SoLF and UNFPA Pakistan, and that SoLF is happy to extend their resources to rural communities in order to further equip them with the skills they need to navigate a technology focal world. She commended the efforts of both our rural champions and the Aurat Raaj team, and hopes to visit some of our champions soon to listen to their impact stories. Neha then took over hosting and played a video on our champions’ listening parties in order to highlight the months of work each and every one of these formidable women have put in as changemakers for their communities.
Then, two interviews were featured on screen, which were by Ms Samina Barkat Ali and Mr Jamal Shoro, both from Sindh Rural Support Organization (SRSO). Saba gave a quick thank you note for all the help and support they have extended to Aurat Raaj for this project since the absolute beginning, after which Ms. Samina’s interview was played. She highlighted how after the COVID-19 era, digital literacy is perhaps our best strength and weapon to navigate the technology hub that is now our world, due to which this project with Aurat Raaj is extremely essential and remarkable in the way it provides digital literacy and uses that to pass on knowledge on health, hygiene and safety topics to thousands of women and girls.
Mr Jamal spoke on how the world has taken a very strong digital shift and even though in today’s day, majority of people (even rural communities) have mobile phones, they are sadly not educated on how they can use them to their fullest potential and extract its benefits. He believes that with projects such as the one started by Aurat Raaj, the women of Pakistan, especially rural women, have the potential to make the world a market for their pursuits and talents.
Neha then invited Saba for our third and final round of prize distribution, which was especially dedicated to our outstanding performers. Before ending the event, Saba put forth a question for all the rural champions and participants, asking them why they think, as per their experience, women and girls in rural areas hesitate to use phones. Naveeda and Kainat both expressed that the education gap, alongside privacy concerns, holds women and girls back from realizing their full digital potential, and that the families and communities of women trying to use phones think they’re in some form of danger when their daughters, sisters, wives, aunts, nieces, or mothers are equipped with a phone.
Saba took this opportunity to also ask the champions about a listening party topic they’d like chatbot content on that Aurat Raaj has not yet covered, to which Naveeda stated that a chatbot on the importance of educating women is especially needed. Saba then handed the stage over to Neha, who teamed up with Alina to ask the participants for any final feedback on not just the event but also this project that they’ve been a part of since April, to which they were met with some very positive and uplifting comments, the main consensus being that everyone thoroughly enjoyed the event.
The event ended on a very wholesome note with the champions and the Aurat Raaj team having a little jam session where everyone sang their favorite songs, after which Neha concluded the afternoon with a closing note. We’re very thankful to everyone who joined, all our guest speakers, and most importantly, our digital champions, without whom none of this would’ve been possible. We’re incredibly proud of their efforts and resilience!
Champions’ testimonials or reviews regarding content and listening parties
During our virtual ceremony, we kept a slot free for our champions to share their opinions on content and their favorite listening parties. The responses were as follows:
Sobia Jarwar (testimonial) was the first to answer, stating that she loved the leadership chatbot content the most, for which she hosted a listening party of 17 participants, and that she feels that with the knowledge she gained from this chatbot topic she’s a leader for her community.
Shabana Aziz (testimonial) answered next, telling the audience that the chatbot content on Menstrual Health was her favorite because she was able to effectively and accurately educate young girls, including her daughter, on important period principles and practices that she herself wasn’t ever able to learn from her mother or grandmothers, and by doing so garnered a lot of appreciation from the women in her community. She also appreciated the Raaji Pads that were gifted to her by Aurat Raaj, and talked about how her and her community members banded together to try and make their own pads by drawing inspiration from the Raaji pad, which overall had a very positive outcome.
Kainat Himmat (testimonial) then let everyone know that the chatbot content on child marriage was her favorite because it is a very prevalent issue in the communities she and her peers have grown up in, and that she always listens to the listening party content by herself first, and then presents it to her participants. She tried to go into further detail but the internet connection around her was quite weak.
Shazia then went on to state Gender as her favorite listening party topic and another champion with her, Nadia, said she loved the chatbot content on self-esteem the most because it helped build her confidence.
Sanam (testimonial) took the spotlight next, talking about how she enjoyed the Menstrual Health listening party the most simply because it brought together so many young girls who were genuinely interested to learn about their menstruation cycles, so much so that even after the listening parties they actively sought her out to ask questions and learn more about period principles and practices.
Zahida Parveen (testimonial) also loved the chatbot content on Menstrual Health because it helped clear a long series of doubts and concerns about the menstruation cycle every month that the women and girls in her community were originally misinformed on via age old practices and beliefs passed down by their mothers and families eg: showering, eating meat/fish, combing your hair, etc are not something one should be doing when on their period.
Lastly, Naveeda (testimonial) said she enjoyed the chatbot content on Menstrual Health, Nutrition & Hygiene, and Child Marriage. She very incredibly highlighted how after witnessing young girls face complications during pregnancy and birth due to early marriages, she was able to use the chatbot content to educate the older women in her community and help them realize the grave mistake they’re making when marrying their children off early. She also started taking better care of herself after the listening party on Nutrition & Hygiene, and was able to defeat the misconceptions in her community around the menstruation cycle after conducting her listening party on the topic.