CSC Empowerment & Inclusion Programme

With an objective to change the course of life’s hurdles for her children, Afshan Bibi, a resident of Jumber, is determined to take upon every task she is skilled to steer through. In this regard, CSC-CEIP’s training sessions in collaboration with Her Ground on menstrual hygiene and associated entrepreneurial pursuit, in the month of April 2021, has reaped fruits for Bibi Afshan’s financial conditions, amongst other women.
However, what remains distinctive about her story is the chain of profitability that she has been able to sustain in such a short time to be able to start sending two of her four children to school.
Bibi Afshan makes about 50 sanitary pads a day and during the night, she flexibly puts buttons to them for firm grip and packaging. Through the training conducted under auspices of CSC-CEIP, the sanitary pads she sells to nearby neighbourhood and market are sustainable in three ways. Firstly, they are re-usable; secondly, the cloth fabric she uses does not prompt skin rash and thirdly, those pads have a strong grip. Thus, within a nexus of three months, Afshan Bibi has established a running business that caters not only to financial but also aspects of social inclusion for her family as well as other women who purchase sanitary pads from her.
She delivers her product on up to three shops, and rising demand at times, leads to twice in a week orders for her. Bibi Afshan’s husband is ill and works on hourly wage basis when he feels better. Thus, she proclaims proudly, ‘‘there is no shame in working hard. I have done it all my life. However, what has made all the difference now is the future stake of my children’’. For her, her business vision is thus not only constricted to running a household, but also changing her family’s lives for the better and so she stitches clothes, teaches, and provide parlour services alongside her business.
The expenditure on a sanitary pad is Rs15-16 for her, and she saves Rs10 from every pad she makes. Initially, Bibi Afshan recalls that the taboo attached with sanitary pads was a major hurdle for the operationalization of her business .Today however, she asserts gladly that the risk she undertook by asking vendors to keep pads in their shops, garners her confidence and stability. She gladly boasts that as the need of the hour, support from her husband and father-in-law to try her hands at all sorts of expertise, skills and training for financial empowerment has been key to her consistent efforts at supporting her family and in turn, upholding concern for hygiene and health of women of her district.

If your experience and qualification are a great match for the requirements of this position, send your resume latest by 09/08/2021 at [email protected] and do mention the position name in the subject line.

With an aim to raise awareness regarding issues propelling as a result of global population advances, World Population Day is commemorated every year on 11th July. In lieu of pandemic, this year's distinctive theme on Population Day entails the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on fertility. It is because, according to United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) research in March 2021, an estimated 12 million women experienced disruptions to family planning services due to pandemic.
The sudden and alarming addressal of high death rates due to Covid despite the strain of increasing global population earlier is due to the fact that, decreasing fertility has led to abrogation of human rights.In this context, World Population Day calls out for policy responses to advocate for health safety, human rights and against violations relating to population abuses.