This Trending-Tuesday in honor of Mother’s Day month, we’d like to share a blast from the past from our 2016 archives.
Draped in a black shawl, Raj Bibi with her twelve-year-old daughter hurries across the hustling marketplace towards the community center. As she walks through the narrow streets of Lyari, she sees many of her neighbors – mothers and daughters – walking together in the same direction.
At the community center, a team of young female youth ambassadors, who individually visited each mother and inducted her in the program, welcomes them to the orientation day. Over the course of the next 60 days, these mothers and daughters meet weekly for sessions on the physical, mental, and social wellbeing of adolescent and young girls.
The behavioral change program named the “Mother – Daughter Club: Shaping the Future” is the brainchild of Fulbright alumna Dr. Noor Sabah Rakhshani and took place at the Lyari Community Development Center and Omar Lane Community Development Center, Lyari, Karachi, with 30 pairs of mothers and daughters. This project was made possible with the help of an alumni small grant from the Pakistan-U. S. Alumni Network (PUAN). All alumni of various U.S. government-sponsored exchange programs in Pakistan are eligible to apply for the grant of up to $5,000 USD to enable them to give back to their communities.
A key component of the program was engaging the pairs in activities that helped strengthen the bond between the mother and daughter, paving way for an open channel of communication. This was done through a series of in-class activities like gardening, yoga, aerobics, and arts and crafts. The program also sensitized women on their rights, home-based business ventures, nutrition and reproductive health, and hygiene. These 60 mothers and daughters are seeds of a hopeful future, for a community marred by gang wars and social insecurity.
