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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.
The biggest contribution of Bedari in the social
movement at that time was its approach. Bedari was the first
organization at least in Islamabad that was totally focused
on violence against women but was a community organization
with men and women fully active at all levels to achieve its
objectives. The ownership of women and men of all ages and
professions that truly made it a community organization was
very strong.
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