Pakistan blog series | Day 1 - Visit to Akhuwat’s office: so much more than microfinance

In February 2017 I was lucky enough to visit our microfinance partner in Pakistan, Akhuwat. Please read my series of blogs to share my experience and insights into this inspiring organisation.

As part of my job I am privileged to visit parts of the world that I wouldn't do otherwise.

One of the most memorable and inspiring trips I have taken recently was to Lahore in Pakistan. Despite the negative impression of Pakistan that the media sometimes present, it was memorable not because of danger lurking round every corner.

It was because I have never come across a more inspirational group of people than the staff of Akhuwat, led by their founder Dr Amjad Saqib.

The city and airport were much less frenetic that I'd imagined (although perhaps landing in Lahore at 2am had something to do with that!)

I had been to Delhi some years earlier and I still vividly remember how many people were at the airport.

It quickly became apparent that westerners are a rare sight in Pakistan, even in large cities such as Lahore. It took a few days to get used to being stared at, but I soon realised that as soon as I smiled, people would shyly smile back. And it wasn't long (in fact, I think it was the next morning in the hotel lift!) before I was asked for my first selfie - and it wouldn't be the last that week!

Tackling gender inequality in Pakistan | The Akhuwat clothes bank initiative

Following his recent trip to Pakistan, Dr Ajaz Ahmed Khan tells us about a very interesting project implemented by our MFI partner AKHUWAT.

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.

More than just microfinance - How Pakistan’s largest Islamic Microfinance Institution supports one of the country’s most stigmatized communities

© Akhuwat 2014

Despite positive measures such as the landmark legal judgement in 2009 that granted transgender people  their own gender category on national identification cards and the Supreme Court recommending that they benefit from affirmative action for civil service jobs, transgender people remain among the most disadvantaged groups in Pakistan.  Often referred to as hijras or khwaja siras (the latter is the term used to describe the transgender courtesans who danced in the courts of the Mughal Emperors during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) they routinely face discrimination in 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 from performing at ceremonies such as weddings and births; extorting payment by disrupting people’s work and most commonly begging - they are, for example, a relatively common sight at traffic lights in many large Pakistani cities such as Karachi and Lahore.