Empowering trans-women in Pakistan

VISION team:

Guru Mumtaz, Asad (Mahi), Saima, Qasim Ali, Abdul Qayyum, Tahir Khilji

Date:

4/2/2019

Meeting with select Youth Council Members

This meeting was held in Islamabad at VISION’s office in the 4^th week of January. The need of the meeting was identified by team VISION in Islamabad after reviewing the final draft of the activity plan of the Youth Council (YC).

Thus, it was decided to bring in four YC members to Islamabad and have them complete the activity plan. During the two days that four YC members were in Islamabad, following issues were discussed at length along with completing the work-plan

1. Strict compliance of the Code of Conduct
2. Safety & Security plan for each activity
3. Reinforcement of maintaining confidentiality on matters linked to interpersonal communications between the members as well as of the activities of the YC
4. Conflict of interest- if any YC member/s is/are employed and have similar or close to similar job description as required by the designed activities of the YC; keeping the outcomes of the activities distinct and separate from each other and not reflecting the results of YC’s activities as an outcome of the activity under employment
5. Importance of developing a Detailed Implementation Plan (DIP)
6. Strict compliance of the financial policy of VISION and utmost transparency in all expenditures made

 Youth Council Members invited to a safety and security workshop

 Bytes for All, a partner organization of VISION, requested to nominate two participants from VISION to attend a 5 days comprehensive training on physical and digital security in Islamabad at two different points in time during this quarter. While Mahi participated in the first workshop, Momi, a YC member benefited from the second five day workshop.

 Activities of Youth Council Members during the Quarter 

Following are some of the activities conducted by YC during this quarter:

1. One YC meeting each month i.e. three in total during the quarter, Team VISION observed and supervised these meetings (Minutes of meetings are available if required)
2. Four SRHR awareness sessions in the community conducted by YC members as per activity plan. Team VISION assisted the YC members in this (Reports of sessions are available if required)
3. One day workshop on Stigma conducted by YC members as per activity plan. Team VISION assisted YC members in this activity ( Report of this workshop is available if required)
4. 3 days Safety & Security workshop conducted by team VISION in Islamabad for the entire YC in lieu of the YC’s activity on sensitization of Police in Multan

All the activities planned for the quarter were completed by the YC members except the Police sensitization activity. The reason for not holding the sensitization meeting was absence of any security plan of the YC, upon which time to time reminders were being sent to the YC but the members were unable to furnish an acceptable security plan. Thus, it was considered essential that the YC members come to Islamabad and prepare their security plans.

The urgency of the matter was noticed by team VISION Islamabad when one of the YC members late one night called Islamabad in a panicked situation, reporting that his Facebook and other accounts were hacked and that he was very scared. The individual was immediately referred to Bytes4All who calmed him and provided him the guidance that he needed.

In an another situation, one of the younger members of YC was in a high-anxiety condition and had gone through heart checkups as well, the background information on the condition as per some of the field team’s reports was blackmailing by random TG community members of outing the YC member to his family. Thus, it was decided that an immediate and urgent comprehensive training on physical and digital security should be arranged for the YC members to understand the importance of safety and security. This training was conducted in partnership with Bytes4All.

Other issues resolved during the Quarter:

1. In future there will be a coordinating body instead of lead and co-lead. This coordinating body will be on revolving basis so that all of the YC members get the chance to participate in the coordination and decision making of YC activities, in addition to sharing responsibility and acquiring skills of developing activities as well as report writing
2. That all the security plans will be strictly followed by YC members and they will reduce their vulnerability through safe and secure sharing of pictures and online information about themselves
3. The YC members now have individual as well as group security plan/s that they can follow for purposes of maximum security.

Youth Council Members encouraged to apply for Out of country workshop through VISION’s networks

VISION is a member of Centre for Sexual and Bodily Rights (CSBR) in Muslim societies. The YC members were encouraged to apply for a training workshop, the information of which coordinator of CSBR shared with VISION.  

The two day workshop with VISION’s Youth Council Members on matters related to activity plan, code of conduct for the youth council and finally the safety and security protocol for the youth council

On the first day of the workshop, team VISION mostly reflected on the activity plan of the youth council. Some of the key issues that were explored during the session were as follows:

• Whether the entire youth council has enough knowledge and understanding of the planned activities and if so what exactly do they understand by each activity and if not how can the team assist for them to clearly understand the objective and impact of the activity upon the council as well as the larger community that they were going to reach out to.
• It was also discussed in detail how each activity was designed by the council members and once the activity was designed, how did they foresee to execute the same activity i.e. highlighting the methodology of execution of the activity
• Since the council had already created a hierarchy within their system, team VISION reflected upon it and tried to understand the need of hierarchy as well as its positive and negative impact upon the smooth working of the council. The team VISION used the council’s conversation as a starting point for giving their own inputs on how a more democratic and inclusive council with decision making through a consultative process may provide better results along with trust-building, professionalism, negotiation skills and conflict resolution among the council members as a bi-product of the entire process.
• Team VISION introduced the council members to the framework of Detailed Implementation Plan (DIP) of the planned activities that includes Activities, Activity Detail, Modes of Verification, Responsibility of individual/s conducting the activity, Indicators and Timeline. Budget detailing i.e. break down of total budget available against each activity with proper heads such as: travel, refreshments, activity cost e.g. stationary, venue rental etc, was also explained to the council members. At the end of this session, a sample DIP of the activities was developed by the council members with an understanding that the same sample would be improved upon after the workshop by some of the group members who voluntarily agreed to take this responsibility upon themselves
• The session on Code of Conduct was a brainstorming session. It was mostly the participants i.e. the youth council members who provided their input as to what would be a mutually agreeable code of conduct for all of them as part of council members and if they were not conforming to any or all agree upon points then how would they take care of the matter. In addition to this, team VISION reemphasized the importance of code of conduct for the group and its smooth working for next one year
• Realizing the importance of safety and security of each council member separately as well as of all of them collectively another brainstorming session was conducted with the council members and it was the council members who spelled out their own vulnerabilities that made them the target for possible threats-internal as well as external, including what would be some of the capacities that would reduce the vulnerability and prepare them better to deal with threats. In this session, the importance of confidentiality of space and content was highlighted by team VISION, further adding that sometimes conversations and discussions can be used out of context and are blown out of proportion that can be hazardous for the youth council. In other words, “what happens within youth council remains within youth council”

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