Life-saving stoves in Congo
 Fuel-efficient stoves could save the lives of displaced women and help the environment in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, aid workers say.  Conflict has consigned hundreds of thousands of people to camps. The demand for firewood – to use as cooking fuel – is causing severe deforestation. And as trees are cut down, women venture into more dangerous areas.
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Make it Matter: Donating Wigs to Women in Need
The loss of her own hair inspired Mika Hill to make custom wigs.
At 30, Hill knows firsthand how a woman feels when she loses her hair. Her own hair fell out several years ago due to an iron deficiency after childbirth. “I cried when I washed it, cried when I combed it, and cried when I looked in the mirror,” she says. Then she bought a wig. “It was too small,” she says, “but my confidence went up dramatically.”
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But many of her clients with alopecia and cancer couldn’t afford to pay. And their insurance often didn’t cover the cost. Hill started giving the wigs away, eventually spending $10,000 of her own money on supplies and marketing. Last year, Hill and her friend Lita Warren set up Pink Barrette, a nonprofit that has donated about 60 wigs, worth $30,000.
Hill pays for the donations with profits from her custom line. But she and her husband, a real estate investor, have also dipped into their savings to keep the organization afloat.
Hill’s clients can’t thank her enough. Elyssa Montoya, a 34-year-old Georgia businesswoman with alopecia, was too embarrassed to be seen in public with badly thinning hair. “I didn’t feel I could best represent myself bald. Thanks to Mika, I now have beautiful curly hair. I feel good about myself again.”
“To see the women’s self-confidence soar after they try on their wigs,” says Hill, “brings tears to my eyes. This is a mission for me—a most rewarding one.”
Courtesy :
Reader’s Digest
Coaching for women
HYDERABAD, India: ‘Pragnya School of Excellence’, a coaching centre started under the banner of Andhra Yuvathi Mandali, will offer training to young women for various competitive exams. The centre will first undertake coaching for Civil Services exams and APPSC Group I and II exams.Contact 9989926376 or 27564638.
Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/18/stories/2010041860360200.htm
Courtesy
The Hindu
Women SHG to run quarry
TIRUVANNAMALAI, India: Indira Gandhi Women Self Help Group from Vettavalam bagged a Blue metal quarry.
Government has decided to allot ordinary blue metal quarries in government poromboke lands in Tiruvannamalai district to Women Self Help Groups and associations formed by liberated bonded labours. Based on a notification given to this effect, Indira Gandhi SHG has bagged quarry license. They can quarry blue metals from 1 hectare land earmarked for them for 5 years. District collector M.Rajendran has presented the order on Tuesday. Deputy Director (mines) Thiyagarajan was present.
Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/15/stories/2010041552830300.htm
Courtesy
The Hindu
Pakistan acid victims rebuild ruined lives
Acid attacks on wives ‘at all time high’
At four years old, Gul-e-Mehtab already knows what she wants to do when she grows up.
This little girl, whose name means “moonlight flower”, wants to be a doctor in order to heal her own mother, Manzoor Attiqa.
“She says: ‘Mama when I grow up, I will become a doctor. I will treat you, and then you will be perfect’,” Manzoor says, with a proud smile.
Twenty-two-year-old Manzoor is a patient in surgical ward 10 in Benazir Bhutto hospital in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi.
Manzoor says the attack followed a row over doing the dishes
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The ward is a cluster of women in brightly coloured shawls, who share the same scars and the same trauma. All have been attacked with acid.
There are no reliable national statistics, but campaigners estimate that there may be as many as 150 victims every year.
It is an intimate crime – often carried out in the family home, by husbands or in-laws.
Manzoor’s attack followed a row over doing the dishes.
“It was seven o’clock in the morning, and I had just finished making breakfast,” she says.
“My daughter was crying so I picked her up, but her grandmother said: ‘Leave her and wash the dishes.’ I told her that I would wash them, and that we had the whole day ahead of us. After this, they started beating me. I was unconscious for four or five days. I woke up in hospital in Lahore.”
While she lay unconscious, Manzoor was drenched in acid. It devoured her lower lip, neck and shoulders and left her chin fused to her chest.
But when she speaks of the in-laws she blames for the attack, there is no bitterness. In spite of her injuries, and her suffering, she says that she has forgiven them.
“They are like my own mother and sisters,” she says. “I just pray God shows them the right path, so they can’t do this kind of thing to anybody else. I forgave them, so that they could realise they did wrong.”
Get the sellers
When we meet Manzoor, she is about to have her sixth surgery – performed free by a group of Pakistani experts, and British volunteers, led by plastic surgeon Charles Viva.
The retired NHS doctor, with a snow-white walrus moustache, has spent decades treating the poor around the globe, including many victims of acid burns.
Retired plastic surgeon Charles Viva has treated many acid burns victims
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“I feel very passionately angry about this because God has made us whole, and for somebody to do this causes a lot of distress for the patients and their families,” he says. “We do what we can to give the women back their dignity.”
In Manzoor’s case, this means grafting skin from her leg on to her neck, so that she can lift her head fully.
Mr Viva wants action against those who sell the acid, not just those who throw it.
“I think we need some very strong deterrents to prevent this happening,” he said.
“I think it’s essential that the government and the authorities should target the people who perpetrate the crime, and those who supply the acid. They are just as guilty for giving the acid.”
Two hours later, Manzoor is back in ward 10. Her surgery was a success, but it won’t be her last.
‘It didn’t end my life’
Opposite her, in bed nine, Saira Liaqat is recovering from her latest operation – her 18th. Her face is still bandaged, but already she is sitting up, supported by her mother, Gulshan.
A medical file rests at the end of the bed, with photos of a striking girl in a gold headdress. That was Saira seven years ago, before she was attacked.
Saira Liaqat was attacked several years ago, but has plans for the future
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Acid has erased any resemblance to the pretty girl of the past, but it has not crushed her spirit. Since the attack, she has trained as a beautician.
“I want to own my own beauty parlour,” she says.
“I want people to say ‘that’s the girl who suffered and didn’t lose hope’. I want to support my parents as well as a son can. I want to show that person that even though he threw acid in my face, it didn’t end my life.”
Saira’s husband is still on trial for her attack. If convicted, he could get between five and 14 years. Gulshan wants an eye for an eye.
“He should either get the death penalty, or have acid thrown in his face, so he knows how it feels,” she says.
“The law is weak in Pakistan. If criminals like him are given a tough punishment immediately, then nobody will do this kind of thing.”
Campaigners are calling for the introduction of life sentences. They say that while Pakistan is finally waking up to this issue, there is still a long way to go.
“At the highest level, people like the chief justice are taking acid violence very seriously,” says Valerie Khan of the Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF), which helps many of the victims.
“In the past six months, we are seeing higher sentences being handed down. But the vast majority of women are unable to even register a case. And police are still turning a blind eye, due to corruption and social pressure.”
While she slept
One of many still waiting for justice is 23-year-old Naseera Bibi.
She is friendly and talkative, in spite of her debilitating injuries.
The acid thrown in her face, while she slept, ate through her nose and both of her eyes. She believes her husband was the culprit.
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 I’ve learnt how to knit sweaters and my children are back with me. I can’t just sit around and lose hope  Naseera Bibi
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She says she heard his voice next to her, as the acid melted her skin, telling her to say it was someone else.
“I started screaming. Then I heard my husband telling me whoever asks you who did it, just say it was Javed. I told him that I haven’t seen anybody. He kept insisting whoever asks you, just say Javed did it.”
Naseera’s main concern now is how to provide for her children, without her sight.
“I’ve been taken to about 10 doctors, but there doesn’t seem to be a chance of restoring my eyesight,” she says.
“I’ve been very upset about this, because I have become a burden. But the ASF sent me to a school to study. I’ve learnt how to knit sweaters, and my children are back with me. I can’t just sit around and lose hope.”
Like other acid attack survivors in ward 10, Nazeera has been robbed of her looks, but not of her courage.
She has two dreams for the future – to send her children to school, and for her attacker to be punished.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8609512.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
India's first open jail for women
Yerawada prison is a place of contrasts.
In one part of the 17-acre complex near the city of Pune in the Indian state of Maharashtra, 300 incarcerated women barely see the light of day and live in cramped, unhygienic conditions.
But another part of the prison is currently undergoing a makeover. Here, women will soon be allowed to roam the premises and farmland in relative freedom.
This will be India’s first open prison for women.
Such jails have existed for men in India since the 1950s – the idea is that well-behaved inmates are transferred to the facility as a reward for their good behaviour after serving a few years of their sentence.
Overwhelming demand
The female prisoners at Yerawada’s open jail will get paid employment outdoors – mostly agricultural work. More importantly, the remainder of their sentence will be cut by half.
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 [The open female prisoners] will get to step out, learn a skill, make some money and get their sentences reduced Uddhav Kamble
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However, the facility will only be available to convicted prisoners and not those awaiting trial.
Government officials say that they have selected most of the candidates for the 50 female places available in Yerawada’s open jail. Needless to say, demand to get in is overwhelming.
Yerawada is one of the oldest central prisons in the country, and its 17 acres of fields means that there is plenty of agricultural work to keep open prisoners occupied.
“Selected women inmates will mostly work in fields during the day and return to barracks in the evening. Our agricultural officer will train them. They get to step out, learn a skill, make some money and get their sentences reduced,” Inspector General (Prisons) Uddhav Kamble explained.
Officials say there is hardly any risk of prisoners escaping because to do so would jeopardise their stay in the prison and their sentences being commuted.
The authorities do not allow journalists access to prisoners held at Yerawada but one former inmate of the closed jail says that an open prison has to be a good idea.
Security at the open prison will be non-existent
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Bharati’s time in prison was characterised by painful memories which she says have scarred her life and the lives of her children.
She says that her husband was an alcoholic and one day returned home, collapsed and died. She was accused of killing him.
She was arrested, imprisoned and her two sons were left to cope with these events on their own. It took months before she was released on bail and the case is still pending in court.
Bharati’s difficulties in jail were similar to those faced by countless other female prisoners.
“Sometimes you get dragged into fights of inmates… I was constantly worried about my children. I could only meet them only once a week or two. It was difficult as there was no-one to organise money for my defence.
“Many women were like me and would have relished the opportunity of a more liberal prison regime.”
Huge factor
One prison official who looks after around 300 closed inmates is also enthusiastic about the concept.
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The scheme should be extended to all women prisoners – convicts and those awaiting trial Bharati, former Yerawada inmate
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“Can you imagine how they would feel to step out in fresh air? They are allowed out of the barracks but it is only within the high walls of the prison. To be able to get out and work in the open will do wonders for these women. It will enable them to see the road, buildings and other people. It will help them tremendously.”
Currently male convicts detained within the Yerawada complex grow aubergines, tomatoes, corn and spinach. The vegetables are sent to the jail kitchen.
Medha Gadgil is the government official who pushed for female open jails. She told the BBC that female prisoners had been deprived of key benefits.
“There are four such jails in Maharashtra alone for men and many more in other states. Now women convicts will also be able to get the benefits,” she said.
Social activists say that the move to introduce women’s open prisons is long overdue. India is a country where many female inmates are in prison because of crimes they have committed in response to domestic violence at home.
They say that much more effort needs to be made to rehabilitate female offenders.
Bharati echoes this thought. “Working in the fields will make women feel better,” she said. “It should be extended to all women prisoners – convicts and those awaiting trial – so that they can start work after being released.”
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8611631.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
Occasion to hear extraordinary stories of ordinary women
| They narrate struggles undergone by them and the unrelenting fight they have put up |
— Photo: G. Moorthy.
AN INSPIRING ACCOUNT:A woman narrating her travails at the International Women’s Day celebration in the city on Saturday.
MADURAI, India: “How many times will she feel shy? How many times will she keep offering coffee? How many times will she fall on others’ feet? How many years will she keep waiting to wear a silk sari? At last when will the day come when someone would accept her without insisting on gold jewellery and a motor cycle?” went a song recited at a meeting organised by Koodu (meaning nest) Women Readers’ Club under a thatched roof at Gandhi Museum here on Saturday.
Sung by Bhagyalakshmi, a member of a women’s welfare organisation based in Theni district, the song gave a perfect start to the event — celebration of the International Women’s Day which fell on March 8. It was not an event to hail the exemplary achievements of women celebrities but an occasion to inspire from hearing ordinary women, whom we meet in our day to day life, narrate the struggles undergone by them and the unrelenting fight they had put up.
Bhuvana, now 39, hailing from Chennai was harassed, tortured and assaulted frequently by her husband 18 years ago. Once he went to the extent of beating up their one-year-old son. It was on that day, she decided to leave the house. But she was not clear on where to go. She did not want to be a burden on her parents. So, the woman picked up her son and his 10-day-old brother and walked up straight to the railway station and boarded a train without even knowing its (or perhaps her) destination.
The train brought her here. Until then she did not even know that a place called Madurai existed in the world because she was born and brought up in Chennai and had not travelled beyond that. A good hearted person saw her standing with bleeding injuries along with her children and admitted her to a hostel managed by Nanban, a social welfare organisation, where she learned to drive an auto rickshaw to fend for herself as well as her children who do not even have a vague remembrance of their father.
“I was the first woman to drive an auto rickshaw in Madurai and I am indebted to the people here for their patronage. All these years, I had been driving only rented auto rickshaws. I wanted to own one and there is no office be it that of the Ministers, Collector or the bank officials whom I had not petitioned seeking financial assistance. After a long struggle, only now a bank has come forward to give me loan,” she concluded with a blink that made tears, waiting all this while on the brink of her eyes, trickle down her cheeks.
Sugumari, now a lecturer in economics with Sri Meenakshi Government College for Women here, was born visually challenged as were her two elder sisters. “When I was a child, some of the villagers seem to have suggested to my parents to kill all three of us. But my father chided them away. Unfortunately, he died when I was in fourth standard. Thereafter, my paternal aunt remained a spinster and educated me and my five siblings,” she reminisced and stressed on the need to have the determination to achieve.
Many other women, including an Head Constable’s wife, who was made to run from pillar to post for 14 long years to get a job of a sanitary worker on compassionate grounds after her husband’s demise, a Muslim woman hailing from Maharashtra who settled down in Andipatti in Theni district and fell victim to usury narrated their travails in the presence of Qudsia Gandhi, an Indian Administrative Service officer having a keen interest in women’s empowerment.
Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/29/stories/2010032959840200.htm
Courtesy
The Hindu
Her 'duty' is helping Muslim women heal after abuse
NEW YORK (CNN) — Toward the end of her marriage, Rabia Iqbal said she feared for her life.
Robina Niaz said the Quran “condemns” abuse of women. “If we witness injustice, we’re required to speak up.”
Iqbal was born in New York to parents who had immigrated to the United States from the tribal areas of Pakistan. She had a strict Muslim upbringing and when she was 16, her parents arranged her marriage to a 38-year-old man. She claims her husband turned violent during their 10 years of marriage.
When she finally left him, she did not know where to turn. Going home wasn’t an option, she said.
“My parents … made clear that they would disown me,” Iqbal said. “My father even said … ‘You’re lucky you live in America because if you lived back home, you would have been dead by now.’ ”
She was hiding out in her office at work when a friend put her in touch with Robina Niaz, whose organization, Turning Point for Women and Families, helps female Muslim abuse victims.
“It was such a relief … to speak about things that … I thought no one would understand,” said Iqbal, who has received counseling from Niaz for more than two years and calls Niaz her “savior.”
“Robina understood the cultural nuances … the religious issues,” Iqbal said. 
Watch Iqbal tell her story »
A devout Muslim, Niaz stresses that there is no evidence that domestic violence is more common among Muslim families.
“Abuse happens everywhere,” said Niaz. “It cuts across barriers of race, religion, culture.”
But, she said, Muslims are often reluctant to confront the issue.
“There’s a lot of denial,” she said. “It makes it much harder for the victims of abuse to speak out.”
When Niaz launched her organization in 2004, it was the first resource of its kind in New York City. Today, her one-woman campaign has expanded into a multifaceted endeavor that is raising awareness about family violence and providing direct services to women in need.
Niaz said she firmly believes that domestic violence goes against Islamic teachings, and considers it her religious duty to try to stop abuse from happening.
“Quran condemns abusive behavior of women,” she said, noting that the prophet Mohammed was never known to have abused women. “Allah says, ‘Stand up against injustice and bear witness, even if it’s against your own kin. So if I see injustice being done to women and children, I have to speak up. It’s my duty.”
Niaz’s mission began after a difficult period in her own life. Born and raised in Pakistan, she had earned a master’s degree in psychology and had a successful career in international affairs and marketing when she moved to the United States to marry in 1990.
“It was a disastrous marriage,” she said.
As Niaz struggled to navigate the American legal system during her divorce, she said she appreciated how lucky she was to speak English and have an education. She realized that many immigrant women without those advantages might be more likely to stay in marriages because they didn’t know how to make the system work for them.
“If this is how difficult it is for me, then what must other immigrant women go through?” she remembered thinking.
After volunteering with South Asian victims of domestic violence, Niaz, who speaks five languages, got a job using those skills to advocate for immigrant women affected by family violence.
Rabia Iqbal, right, has received counseling from Niaz for two years.
But Niaz’s focus changed on September 11, 2001. “I was no longer a Pakistani-American … I looked at myself as a Muslim.”
Niaz said the backlash many Muslims experienced after the terror attacks made abuse victims more afraid to seek help; they feared being shunned for bringing negative attention to their community. Watch Niaz explain the effects of 9/11 on abused Muslim women »
“Women who were caught in abusive marriages were trapped even more,” recalled Niaz.
In 2004, Niaz used her savings to start Turning Point for Women and Families. Today, her work focuses on three main areas: providing direct services to abused women, raising awareness through outreach, and educating young women — an effort she hopes will empower future generations to speak out against abuse.
Crisis intervention services are a critical element of Niaz’s efforts. Through weekly counseling sessions, she and her team provide emotional support to the women while helping them with practical issues, such as finding homeless shelters, matrimonial lawyers, filing police reports or assisting with immigration issues.
Niaz has helped more than 200 Muslim women. While most of Turning Point’s clients are immigrants, the group helps women from every background.
While Niaz has support from many people in New York’s Muslim community, she acknowledges that not everyone appreciates her efforts. She keeps her office address confidential and takes precautions to ensure her safety.
“There have been threats … but that comes with this work,” she said. “I know that God is protecting me because I’m doing the right thing.”
Reference Link
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/09/24/cnnheroes.robina.niaz/index.html
Courtesy
CNN
Saudi female poet whose verse inflames and inspires
Saudi female poet whose verse inflames and inspires
From beneath a veil, a Saudi woman is setting her conservative Arab homeland alight.
Hissa Hilal is already challenging convention by being at once a journalist and a wife and mother of four children.
But it is her blistering poetry – recited while dressed in a traditional head-to-toe abaya cloak and broadcast on traditional Arabic television – that is really defiant.
Using a traditional verse form native to the Arab Peninsula’s nomadic tribes, she writes critically about the country’s hard-line Muslim clerics, calling them: “vicious in voice, barbaric, angry and blind”.
Anger in the spotlight
Condemning the violence that she says lies beneath their religious messages, her poems speak of some of the clerics “wearing death as a robe cinched with a belt” – an apparent reference to suicide bombers’ explosives belt.
Her poems rail against what she sees as a dangerous and excessively conservative shift in Arab society and mores, from within a country where women cannot travel without a male guardian and are forbidden from driving.
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Most of the people loved what I said, from their hearts Hissa Hilal
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“What made me so angry is seeing the Arab society becoming more and more kept to itself, not like before – loving and caring and sharing and open and welcoming everyone,” she told the BBC’s World Service.
“Now, even if you want to be simple and nice with others, people are asking themselves whether it is haram [forbidden] to say hello to strangers,” she said, adding: “I blame those who have led the people, and directed them this way.”
Hissa Hilal’s words are delivered from beneath a spotlight and televised across the Arab world from the capital of UAE, Abu Dhabi, on a reality television programme called The Million Poets, where contestants compete to be the best poet.
If she wins, she will take home a prize of $1.3m (£870,000) in cash.
She describes the experience of reaching the competition’s final – due to be aired next week – as “amazing”, but her poetry has also sparked death threats on Arab websites, with some outraged commentators saying she is acting shamefully.
‘Small village’
Her voice quietens when she describes how some have posted messages asking for her home address – with the underlying threat that they would track her down and kill her.
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I know the world is a small village – from my heart I wish peace and love for everybody Hissa Hilal
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But, she says, many more have expressed support for her poems. She told the BBC that women especially have said they are rooting for her.
“Even old ladies, young ladies, they all said: ‘You are our hope’.
“Most of the people loved what I said, from their hearts. They think I am very brave to say so, and that I said what they feel in their hearts.”
She explains the apparent contradiction in the fact that she advocates women’s rights while wearing the full veil – which some suggest is a symbol of female oppression: “Covering my face is not because I am afraid of people. We live in a tribal society and otherwise my husband, my brother will be criticised by other men.”
While her poetry is intended for a wide audience, the act of covering herself, she says, is out of understanding for her male relatives.
“I know they love me and they support me. It’s a big sacrifice for them in such a society to let me go to the TV and talk to the media. I am hoping my daughters won’t have to cover their faces and they’ll live a better life,” she said.
A published poet, Mrs Hilal – who is reported not to have studied at university – held the position of poetry editor for the Arab daily newspaper, al-Hayat.
A fan of Victorian writer Charles Dickens and US author Ernest Hemingway, Mrs Hilal says her fundamental message is one of peace and understanding: “I know the world is a small village. From my heart I wish peace and love for everybody.”
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8587185.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
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