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Project Description:

The Chipursan valley is located in north Pakistan at the border of Afghan Pamir. Three thousand people live in this remote area and suffer from a harsh climate, inaccessibility, limited cultivatable land, and a short growing season. With people dependent on subsistent farming, livelihood opportunities are very limited especially for women.

Currently there are eleven women’s organizations (representing 300 members) working with the women in the region, 30% whom are literate. Creating livelihood opportunities for the 1500 women remains the primary challenge of these organizations. The goal is to develop vocational training and production centers where women can learn how to use local resources to produce and market various handcrafts.

Each family owns several sheep and the production of products made from the wool of these sheep is a potential income generating activity for women. Traditionally women have been using traditional skills and rudimentary tools to make woolen jackets, caps and other products for home use.

The project aims to upgrade the skills of those women who are already producing woolen garments to put them more in alignment with market needs. This will require the use of improved technologies. Groups of 10 women from each village will be trained to create improved wool products with each village group focused on one specific product. Each group will be provided with basic tools and equipment who can then involve other women to establish a village level business.

Update from the field: November 2010

HiMaT Winter Newsletter

Update from the field: October 2010

Letter From Four Worlds

HiMaT Fall Newsletter

Update on Flooding in Pakistan

In August of 2010, Pakistan experienced the worst flood disaster in the country’s history, a disaster that the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called “the worst disaster in the history of the United Nations”.

The heavy rains that caused the floods first impacted the northern high mountain region. For at least three weeks, Hunza was cut-off from the world—an island in the midst of a vast inland sea that eventually flowed downhill and left millions of households and thousands of communities in southern Pakistan devastated and vagrant.

Again our project area was entirely cut-off. This time there was no road access at all from the north to the capital, Islamabad. Electricity, phone and Internet were out for three weeks. We had to postpone a scheduled field visit set for the end of September. And, to make matters even worse for the people of Gojal, the promised disaster recovery money was withdrawn.

What Now?

The flooding, along with the Hunza Landslide that occurred on January 4, have both turned our project areas from one where 70% of households were ranked as “poor” or “ultra poor” to one in which the entire population has been devastated, the local economy has been destroyed, and almost all households are ultra poor and struggling to help others that are even worse off than they are.

This November we will again try to launch our HiMaT area training and support centre, (which is partially operational now). Our goal will be to begin training programs during our fall visit and continue them in the spring.

The opportunity has never been greater to build the strength of local leaders and local institutions and for using the shared problem of disaster recovery as a focal point for continuous improvement in community capacity for sustainable development.



Update from the field: March 2009

Women from 13 villages of Kel union council participated in this program. A female master trainer was hired from the main town of Muzafarabad who provided training on various handicrafts making in two training centers. Selected women from all 13 villages received training in these centers. The training continued for five months. A display of the products made by the local women was made in the capital city of Kashmir where people from various walks of life visited the display. The visitors included key government and political dignitaries and members from the private sector. A handsome amount of products were sold in this display. Later the World Food Program (a UN agency) provided machines for the centers for the women to start production of various handicraft material that could be sold in the local market.