Building Homes for Poor in Africa

"When will you come back ?….We want a better future for us and our children !"

A simple question but I answered it incorrectly once by saying I don’t know and it has haunted me forever. I was offering widows, victims of an earthquake in Pakistan, cash money that I had raised from my fellow Pakistanis and friends. These were desperate widows who had lost their husband and children only weeks ago, could not work in the marketplace as it was still frowned upon in some areas of the country, and were financially vulnerable and target of criminals and people of predatory character. I was offering them 100’s of dollars each, a big sum in a poor country – and the ladies had rejected the money. Instead they were asking me – “When will you come back?” I had honestly answered that I didn’t know. It all depended on if I could raise more money. Their response was keep the money, we will spend it and then starve later. They also told me “We don’t want your maybe’s – Lie to us if need be. Don’t take away our Hope”. They said if you are serious give us a skill so we can get a job, or sell a product, so we can sustain ourselves in the long run. In a conservative society where women, and especially widows, face hurdles to employment – they were right - something drastic had to be done. So after some one year of planning and fund raising SARID started the first women’s vocational center in Muzaffarabad, AJK in 2007. We rented a place, gave them dozens of sewing machines, computers, teachers. Women learned, sewing, making quilts, learning English and were selling clothes in the marketplace within six months. From that day on SARID has focused on a new mission -  vocational training so people can find jobs, lead productive lives, become self-reliant. So now in Lesotho we are trying to do something similar. Lesotho is the coldest place in Africa, with sub-zero temperatures with half the country buried in snow for half the year. People’s homes are mostly unheated as fossil fuel is unaffordable. We are trying to introduce a new way of construction so they can heat the home – naturally with the sun’s heat - without fossil fuels. But unless we build more prototypes we will not be able to convince the marketplace that this is the right approach. Without money this cannot be done. So people in Lesotho also ask me the same question very often. When will you come back? I don’t have the heart to tell them I don’t know. Because the fact is unless SARID gets support from like-minded folks, who believe that all of us not only share a common DNA but also are part of a larger family of human beings, we may not be able to help. So I lie to them and tell them “soon”, as I know if I take away their hope – I might take away the only joy they have known in life. You can read an interview of the ladies in Pakistan in SARID’s website, www.saridweb.org, written by Tusha Mittal “Building a Stable Future”. Please consider supporting our work. Javed Sultan (www.saridweb.org)

Links:

• Our non-profit website
• A Report by a Journalist on SARID's work in an Earthquake zone
• The Muzzafarabd Ladies Vocational Center