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Where we do it > Pakistan - Irene Daguno

Irene Daguno, Gender Adviser

In Pakistan the way men and women are treated by society is very different. Just 36% of women are literate and many cannot claim basic human rights such as education and healthcare. Women get left out of decision-making processes, such as voting in elections and taking part community forums, because they don’t know they have the right to be involved.

One organisation working to address this is the Sungi Development Foundation in Islamabad. It works in many areas, including education, health, sanitation, enterprise development, and earthquake relief, but its priority in all its activities is to encourage the poorest people to get involved in governance issues. To do this it helps develop village committees, which bring together men and women to discuss development issues and identify initiatives that will benefit the whole community.

Despite its efforts, not enough women were getting involved in these activities, so Sungi requested the support of a VSO volunteer who had expertise in promoting gender equality. Irene Daguno, 31, who is now working as a gender adviser at Sungi previously spent seven years with the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women.

There her work included raising public awareness of the rights of women, developing partnerships with government departments to ensure women’s rights were incorporated into the Philippines’ development plans and managing campaigning activities. Her skills and experience include partnership development; project management; negotiation; advocacy and publicity activities; proposal writing; training and monitoring and evaluation.

Irene began her placement in July 2006 and over two years will work with the teams at Sungi who co-ordinate the community projects. She will help them to understand the different roles men and women can play in the community; develop programmes that are sensitive to the needs of men and women and identify ways in which they can encourage more women to take part in these activities. She will also develop monitoring and evaluation techniques so Sungi can assess the impact of its community projects.

Of her initial impressions Irene said: “The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Pakistan was at the airport, when you enter there is a queue for foreigners, a queue for Pakistan citizens and a queue for women and children. I thought, so aren’t women in Pakistan regarded as citizens? In the Philippines inequality is hidden but here it is more blatant.”

Samina Khan, the Executive Director of Sungi added,“Women in rural Pakistan are the most marginalized in society and we wanted to raise awareness of their rights, but it can be difficult to find someone who can travel around the rural areas and who has a good understanding of the issues. We needed an outside perspective, which is why we asked for VSO’s support”.

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