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The
SESWA(A brief History) click for details)
It had little capacity and
consciousness to deal with the issues of women development, children rights and
the various kind of abuses against them at various levels, constraints faced by
the poor people engaged with the agriculture, and health & Sanitation. So
a group of young educated men got together to work for change. The assorted
bunch comprised graduates, educated farmers and high school students who shared
the common goal of setting things right. But not one of them knew how. That was
1982 and the NGO phenomenon had yet to take off. With no model to emulate, no
skills to apply and no mentor to follow. This group spent all their free time in
earnest debate concerning the myriad problems and the possible solutions.
Four years of discussion
delivered Shewa Educated Social Workers Association
(SESWA). Formulating a set
of by-laws, the group elected a voluntary governing body together with an
association of voluntary workers and arrived on the scene with a printed
letterhead and a couple of registers in September 1986.
Since
there was no office and no money to rent one, they set themselves up in the
Hujra of one of their supporters.
Now most of them had jobs or agriculture to look after or where
studentswith lessons to mind and the weekly holiday was the only day they could work in the village. One Friday in September that year Shewa
wokeup to find this
bunch of madmen clearing choked drains removing rubbish from the streets.
Conspiracy theorists went into high gear; the young men had received a vast sum
of money from the dictatorial regime, one rumor went, to pursue an agenda that
was difficult for ordinary folk to perceive. Or, as the mullahs thundered, they were agents of foreign
anti-Muslim lobbies.
Working in the Swabi district at that time was the well-known German donor
GTZ and the SESWA members frequently saw its vehicle bearing the European
director to their project area north of Shewa. One day these men got it into
their heads to stop the foreigner and have a work with him; why was it that GTZ
could only work in the neighboring union council while completely ignoring them
when they were equally deserving of assistance? As the director’s jeep
approached Shewa one fine day, they stepped into the middle of the road to stop
it, demanding that the man listen to what they had to say. The GTZ director
promised to return for a discussion. The result was SESWA’s first partnership
with a donor. Albeit tiny in terms of aid, the 25000 rupees were sufficient for
the building of a flood protection wall along one floodwater stream that
periodically inundated the village. SESWA provided the entire unskilled
workforce and when the GTZ engineer came to inspect the dyke he told the
organization they had accomplished 50000 rupees worth of work for half as much.
SESWA’s battle for registration with the Social Welfare Department, already
into its fourth year, was given new impetus by the GTZ partnership as the agency
preferred working with registered bodies. After all the comic twists the effort
finally paid off and SESWA emerged as a registered NGO in 1990.that SESWA had
already garnered enough respect among local circles is manifest from the fact
that their registration fee of 10000 rupees was paid by the district council.
As catalyst for social change
SESWA’s work would not be complete without focusing on elimination of all kind
of discrimination against the women, girls and children, provision of education
to all, especially to the destitute and vulnerable, uplift of human rights and
fight against injustices, environmental issues, health & sanitation and
introducing new technologies in the agricultural field.
For
details of SESWA click here!