Buy computers for low-income women in Pakistan

My project was to establish an internet cafe for the women of Hazara Community Marriabad in Quetta. It’s a taboo for the women to use internet in internet cafes and do their assignments and there is not a single internet cafe for the women and girls who don’t have this facility at their home. All these circumstances compelled me to do something for them.

When I attended ACP I came up with idea to establish a women literacy centre and internet cafe, with the help of CYAAD and Amozgah. I established a women literacy centre and internet cafe for the women of Marriabad. The objective of the project was to provide healthy and secure platform to the women where they can easily access the internet in this modern world and can do their assignments. The second objective of the centre was to teach basic computer courses to the young literate and illiterate women of marriabad.   

Please explain how you have used the funds for your project. Who all benefitted from your efforts (please specify the number of people)?

 Computers need a lot of accessories and programming etc, while sometimes due to unavailability of budget and enough money we have been unable to do so. This fund for us was a chance to buy new accessories and discard the old ones which are hardly working. Funds were used for the purchasing of the following accessories.

Name of the items

Unit cost

Number of items purchased

Total amount

Mouse

200 per mouse

5

1000

Key boards

250 per Key board

3

750

Extension wires

350 per wire

3

1050

USB

750 per USB

1

750

Filling of cartage

400 per car

1

400

2^nd hand scanner

1800 per scanner

1

1800

Paper ream

400 per ream

4

1600

Used LCD

2150 per LCD

1

2150

The funds benefited the computer center while it is accomdating 30 student on a daily basis. Before the funds the number of student were decreasing day by day due to the non-functionality of some of the computers because of lack of the equipment and new accessories. In a broader way we can say the received funds gave breathe to the computer and internet café.

Were you able to meet all your objectives? And how has this funding benefitted your project and the community members in general?

Cultures is no doubt the identity of the communities and is good in many aspects but we cannot deny that there are restrictions of the cultures which are not acceptable and have no logic behind such as the restriction of the females regarding the net cafes, although many of the females in Marriabad are professionals and need to do a lot with the printers and scanners etc. These required facilities are available in net cafes only but they are not allowed to go there.

My project with the objective to facilitate more female use of computers has been met as such females daily visit this net café. Expanding this net café to a computer centre to let the females learn the basic courses was the next step and another objective which is being run. This funding has helped my project by updating the computers as the old ones were demotivating the students from coming to the center. New accessories help in keeping the motivation high as students will feel increased interest in the project.