Illiteracy and poverty could not push Ms. Khadija Bheel to stop dreaming to educate her children. She seems naturally motivated woman activist in village Zero Point, Umerkot district, who wanted to promote education to her community children. The village comprises of 300 households, located at 3 km distance from Umerkot city, which earlier did not have school. Thus, community people never tried to enroll their kids to nearby schools to bring any change.
Ms. Khadija is the mother of 3 daughters and 4 sons. Traditionally, all family members, including children work in agriculture fields to ease their families. But now she wanted to educate her children to bring change in their life. About this change, she says earlier there was no school in the locality, thus the parents would engage their children to work in agriculture fields with them. But now there is school and I wanted community people to enroll their children in this institute.
Ms. Khadija claims to have succeeded through her willpower and her younger son is studying in college and appeared in intermediate examination. She attached the hope with her son to get higher education.
Moreover, she wants to mitigate issues of minority like forced and early marriage, violence against women, education, health etc. She, sharing the understanding of community, said cultural, traditional binding, lack of awareness and education people oppose her thinking, insisting her to follow the path of family elders, who could not allow their successors to get education. Despite this kind of opposition, “I did what now is proud to have educated son”.
Majority of dwellers belong to scheduled castes like Kolhi, Bheel, Meghwar and others. Since generations the literacy level among these tribes was witnessed very low: 15% among males while 2% among females. The reason was because there was no any girls’ school. Only primary school for boys was there, in which girls were reluctant to be enrolled. Like school, there is no healthcare facility in the village. The people seem discarded in terms of basic facilities like education and healthcare.
Now whenever she gets chance, she asks village women that all human being are equal, having right to enroll their children in local school. She links the entire backwardness among community to illiteracy and reluctance to bring change. Mostly community women always were reluctant to follow her advice and do not like change these traditions. But she continued to motivate them.
She always pleaded that since “we are not educated we face many hurdles in the society. Thus, we have to bring changes though promoting education for our daughters”.
Ms. Khadija Bheel accredits SRPO team, which visited their village and invited her to participate in the meeting. She shared her views and actively participated. She was too much happy to listen that SRPO wanted to format village women committee and all women selected her as a President of that village’s committee. Then she performed her role during organizing the similar event of International Day of Rural women, which attracted a large number of women.
She spoke on the occasion, saying that “we all belong to rural communities and backgrounds. We know the condition of rural women, who face many challenges.”
She lauded the role of SRPO team for arranging such kind of programs and inviting women to come together and discuss the important aspect of the society, mostly the rural women.
