Pakistan: Land of Opportunity for Social Entrepreneurs

[Riaz Haq]

"All members of the Commission (on Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation) were agreed, Pakistan is a land of opportunity" i-genius Opportunity Pakistan Report April, 2014

i-genius, headquartered in London, calls itself a "World Community of Social Entrepreneurs". It promotes social entrepreneurship to a network in over 200 countries.

Last year in September, it sent fifteen people (Commissioners) from Australia, Italy, Pakistan and the United Kingdom to Pakistan to survey its social entrepreneurship landscape.  At the end of their trip, all 15 members of the team unanimously conclude that "Pakistan is a land of opportunity" for social entrepreneurship and innovation.  They said:

"The population (of Pakistan) is proportionately one of the youngest in the world. The youth predominately feel passionate about their country and are determined for it to succeed. Entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship seems almost natural to them, perhaps in part due to the lack of large employers. Where their parents forged family businesses in traditional practices often around clothes, food and retail, Pakistani youth are embracing new opportunities that arise from modern technology and creative industries. Likewise, women (young and old) are making an important contribution to the economy and becoming founders of their own businesses. Pakistanis have had to overcome many hardships, but this in turn has made them resourceful, robust and resilient. Such characteristics are ideal in shaping successful social entrepreneurs."

Particular areas they focused on include energy, water and housing.  Writing for the Guardian newspaper, Nishat Ahmad identified some of the key efforts being made in these two areas.

Clean Water:

Nishat Ahmad highlights Pharmagen Water. Founded in 2007, Pharmagen aims to provide poor communities in Pakistan’s second largest city, Lahore, with affordable clean and purified drinking water. It is supported by the Acumen, which invests in entrepreneurs and creates venture capital which can provide solutions to causes of poverty.

Off-grid Energy:

In energy sector,  SRE Solutions is helping with affordable solar panels for the poor. Established just last year with Acumen’s support it offers to harness solar energy for off-grid customers in districts of Punjab and Khayber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

Affordable Housing:

Born after the 2005 earthquake, Ghonsla is working to build affordable housing for the poor. In the coming months Ghonsla is looking into increasing production and collaborating with another insulation firm based in Germany while working locally to increase the company’s footprint in Pakistan’s northern district of Chitral, a scenic yet underdeveloped area bordering the Himalayas.

Startup Finance:

In finance, Nishat Ahmed cites SEED, Social Entrepreneurship and Equity Development, a venture which supports startups and grassroots innovations. SEED provided initial funding for Ghonsla. Its incubation center in Pakistan provide opportunities for young entrepreneurs in their early years of startup. It was established by friends Faraz Khan and Khusro Ansari and runs five distinct projects, including StartUp Dosti, a business plan based competition for early stage startups in India and Pakistan. It seeks to build relationships between the next generation of entrepreneurs from the two countries and the wider South Asian diaspora. As part of this it also launched Pakistan’s first television program closely based on the BBC’s Dragons Den format. It is to be aired in India and Pakistan in November.

Other Sectors:

i-genius report on Pakistan also mentions their commissioners' meetings with other important social entrepreneurs such the Citizens Foundation (TCF) in education sector and Zacky Farms in sustainable agriculture.

i-genius report says that Pakistan's social entrepreneurs are actively seeking ways to fill the huge gaps created by successive governments' continuing neglect of the country's social sector and infrastructure needs.

Summary:

Pakistan has many problems in almost all areas including education, health care, food, water, energy, housing and infrastructure. But the country is also home to one of the youngest and most passionate populations which, in the words of i-genius commissioners, is "determined for it to succeed. Entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship seems almost natural to them, perhaps in part due to the lack of large employers. Where their parents forged family businesses in traditional practices often around clothes, food and retail, Pakistani youth are embracing new opportunities that arise from modern technology and creative industries. Likewise, women (young and old) are making an important contribution to the economy and becoming founders of their own businesses. Pakistanis have had to overcome many hardships, but this in turn has made them resourceful, robust and resilient. Such characteristics are ideal in shaping successful social entrepreneurs".

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Social Entrepreneurship in America and Developing World

TEDx Karachi

light Candles, Do Not Curse Darkness

Social Entrepreneurs Target India, Pakistan

Pakistani-American Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley

Fighting Poverty Through Microfinance in Pakistan

Silicon Valley Summit of Pakistani Entrepreneurs 2008

Pakistan's Multi-Billion Dollar IT Industry

Media and Telecom Sectors Growing in Pakistan

Pakistan's Middle Class Growth in 1999-2009

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan start-up looks to break taboos around menstruation
Many women in the country remain uninformed about periods, but a social media-based project is targeting the problem

https://www.ft.com/content/e1bc10d8-d25b-45e7-93a3-43a024c80cd4



Saba Khalid has set herself the goal of breaking some of Islamic Pakistan’s long-held taboos with the help of the internet, smartphones and WhatsApp.

“Technology offers a sense of comfort,” she says of the work of Aurat Raaj, her Pakistani social enterprise. It educates women and adolescent girls about menstruation by means of audio messages sent via the WhatsApp social media platform.

Three years after Khalid, a journalist turned social entrepreneur, launched Aurat Raaj, she believes “there is a change of views coming” among communities in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, where her service operates.


Though still short of meeting its objective of seeing information on menstruation included in Pakistan’s school textbooks, Aurat Raaj has come a long way, Khalid says.

Rather than treating periods as a matter of shame, she and 30 field workers — so-called menstrual champions — spread their message about periods as a healthcare matter.

Aurat Raaj says it has reached at least 50,000 women through urban and rural campaigns, as well as podcasts and gatherings known as period parties.

Internet coverage in the region is patchy, so recorded messages in the native Sindhi language, rather than live content, are sent to the menstrual champions. These cover topics such as instructions on making sanitary pads with locally available cloth and the sanitisation of pads for reuse.

For Shaiwana Nasir, a menstrual champion based in Sukkur, 350km north-east of the port city of Karachi, making inroads into communities is a gradual process. “It’s a sensitive subject. People became offended when they were first approached,” she says.

The other challenge was the low level of smartphone ownership among women in the roughly 50 villages in Nasir’s area of responsibility. “We had to first convince village elders that this was an essential service. Once we gained acceptability, we were able to enrol local women in our sessions,” she says.

Each menstrual champion sets aside a room, typically in their home, where women gather to hear audio messages and participate in group discussions.




Breaking taboos around menstruation in rural Sindh has been difficult, because of the deeply conservative values many residents hold. Similarly, on matters of sex and birth control, the challenge was evident at a clinic in Karachi, where a doctor saw a woman in her mid-twenties who was in her seventh pregnancy in as many years of marriage to a truck driver.

The couple and their six children live in a two-room slum in Lyari, one of Karachi’s poorest neighbourhoods, where waterborne infections and other ailments are rife. “I told [the patient] that her life will be in danger [if she has more children], but it’s the same reply as I have heard from other patients — the husband doesn’t agree,” the doctor says.



The challenge of discussing sex-related issues is greatest among Pakistan’s uneducated poor — almost one-third of the population lives below the poverty line — but women from middle- and upper-income households also face obstacles in accessing such information. “In many homes, irrespective of their income level, women are under pressure to have more children,” the doctor adds. “The ideal of a two-child home is disregarded because families and husbands insist on large families.”

Khalid, however, remains optimistic. Although the Covid-19 pandemic forced Aurat Raaj to scale back meetings last year, the platform has since returned to its regular schedule, and the number of menstrual champions is set to rise to 100 in Sindh. Khalid is also hoping to expand Aurat Raaj’s services into Punjab province, which is home to some 60 per cent of the country’s population, and to send out its messages in local languages such as Punjabi and Pushto.