Violence against women

Dr Fouzia Saeed has been working on violence against women for the last 25 years. While studying in the United States at the University of Minnesota, Dr . Saeed actively volunteered at crisis centers in Minnesota. She received training as an advocate and a councilor to deal with violence survivors at Chrysalis. She worked on helpline, counseling violence survivors on the phone and provided them with references for legal help, medical and shelter facilities. She also received training from Minnesota Intervention Center for facilitating small groups of women. Later, she conducted a research study for St Paul Intervention Center where she assessed the satisfaction level of violence survivors from the law enforcing agencies. This included police, courts, counselors and shelters. The outcomes of the report and the specific recommendations formulated by her were presented to a body of senior judges and police officials. Many of the recommendations were accepted. She worked with St. Paul Intervention Center as a woman’s advocate and volunteered in a program which provided violence survivors direct support after they had requested police intervention.

Committee on Violence Against Women, Women Action Forum (WAF) 1988
After returning to Pakistan she joined Women Action Forum. She formed a taskforce under its Islamabad chapter called Committee for Violence Against Women. This committee analyzed factors that have helped this violence persist and initiatives needed in the society to address some of these aspects. In order to deepen the discussion she and others on the task force organized workshops on the issue. They took out a booklet which almost became the first publication on violence against women in Pakistan. The talk of violence against women was not as common as it is now at that time. In general people were not responsive to it, but the commitment level was high.

Through this committee the work was more of an analysis level. To some extent it was also mobilizing and influencing women’s groups and activists that could focus more on the issue with a hands on approach.

Bedari has been the first Crisis Center in Pakistan that dealt with women experiencing violence. The Center not only had a Crisis Program but also had awareness programs to curb gender based violence in the society. It had self growth programs for violence victims as well as women in general. Support groups helped women in the society to gradually build support networks and help each other in the process of empowerment. The Crisis Program provided crisis counseling to the violence victims and referred them to other professionals on their panel like lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists etc. In the first one year Bedari became the talk of the town and gained support from all sectors of the community of Islamabad including government professional agencies like police and government shelters. It can be said safely that Bedari was the most broad based organization in Islamabad that fully mobilized the community and got full support from all sorts of community members. Shop keepers gave us discount just hearing the name Bedari, policemen themselves would bring any women who was found in vulnerable situation and leave her at Bedari, women at times would arrive at Rawalpindi train station and ask anyone for Bedari’s address and people would send them to us. All the members had to do was to put out a list of things they needed for Bedari at its door and the next day the things would be left in our garden by the community.

The organization was founded in 1992 by Dr Fouzia Saeed and Dr. Ambreen Ahmad. At that time others among the core members who formed the first executive body included Dr. Sara Tirmazi, Shazreh Husain and Roshaneh Zafar.

The first activity that we started much before the launch of the formal organization was running of a support group. This was facilitated by Dr. Ambreen Ahmad with others mentioned above as the group. There were a few other women who were a part of the group who did not end up being the core members of the organization. The idea of Bedari evolved in this group. It was Dr Ambreen Ahmad and Dr. Fouzia Saeed who took the lead and three out of the support group members followed with full commitment.

It took us about a year to evolve our approach. This can be referred as our ideology also. It developed a specific framework for social change (Described later). We tested our activities and began making a model for a totally community based organization for the community of Islamabad.

The beginning of the organization took place as a reflection exercise where the objective of the organization was identified to create a society free of violence where men and women could live in healthy relationships. A mega workshop on violence against women was held in Islamabad, which was attended by over 200 people. The full day event sparked off a discussion from people’s hearts. They openly shared their pains, concerns, fears and developed solidarity to deal with this issue with full commitment. Mr. I A Rehman graced the occasion and talked to us in the conclusion ceremony. In the later half of the program the community was divided up into small groups. This was done on the basis of the key areas that emerged out of this discussion. These included direct services of women in crisis, awareness raising, intense sessions for women in general where they could look at the gender relations in their lives and empower themselves to improve them. Theatre was also considered as an option.

The selection of the participants was done very strategically. Islamabad’s community was divided up into segments. Community people from all professions and classes were identified and it was made sure that we get people from each of those segments. That we thought was a representative community of Islamabad.

After this event the sub groups committed to carry on the thinking in their sub groups and decided to start evolving Bedari’s programs. We started conceiving two main categories of programs. One for the short term solution for violence against women which included setting up of a crisis counseling center and a referral system of law enforcing agencies, medical help psychiatrists etc who could provide services to women in crisis and the other was for women in general for their growth and for the community members for awareness raising on this issue for a long term change in the society.

The core members had a dialogue with the community members and discussed the mechanism of operation. We agreed that most of us can contribute our time and in kind but would require some financial support to rent a house. The house was considered crucial to our approach. We wanted to build a safe space where the community could experiment with a micro social system that would reflect the changes we wanted in the society. Thus we wanted to create a space where people, men and women, rich and poor, educated and illiterate all feel fully supported and accepted by the Bedari community. Thus it was decided to take some funds for the rent of the house and salary for a full time coordinator, and two part time psychologists. It was extremely important for this group them to be sure that all the other needs would be met by the community including developing and running of the programs, setting up of the house, brining in furniture, stationary, plants and whatever else that was needed to make that house a space that we all wanted.