Women’s Program-Zeest

ZEEST literally meaning life, focuses on Gender and Violence Against Women.

Mission Statement: “Striving for a better life for women”

Zeest is a Rozan program working on the emotional and mental health of women with special focus on Violence Against Women. Zeest believes in women’s agency and ability to take charge of their lives and affirms their right to participate and contribute as equal members of this society. It upholds the right of women survivors of violence to have access to equality care and support by both state and civil society.

Strategies:

Prevention: To foster an environment and culture where VAW can be prevented from happening by addressing its roots and structural causes as well as its impact in an individual and societal context.

Response Mechanism: Strengthening Response Mechanism through Survivor Centered Approach to facilitate the GBV survivors in the process of their physical, social and psychological well being and restoration.   

A) AWARENESS RAISING

Aim: A general lack of awareness of women rights lead to the adoption and strengthening of stereotypical gender roles. The main aim of raisining awareness on gender inequality and violence against women, therefore, is to build a better understanding of the challenges that women face in the context of deep-rooted patriarchal norms, and of the impact that violence against women and gender inequality create for the individual and society at large.

Topics: Zeest conducts various awareness-raising activities with different stakeholders (NGOs, CBOs, lawyers, doctors, LHVs, students etc) on topics such as:

• emotional health,
• violence against women,
• ethical handling of women survivors of violence. It raises awareness.

Mediums: Zeest raise awareness using various innovative mediums.

• Orientation sessions
• Television programs
• Radio programs
• Seminars  
• Material development

Awareness Raising with Women Survivors of Violence:

Zeest conducts awareness raising activities with women survivors of violence on their rights as well as on the responsibilities of service providers. The activities are a blend of self-growth sessions, message-oriented games, art activities, movie screenings, awareness sessions on gender and legal issues, the celebration of important days like 12^th February (Pakistani Women’ Day, 8^th March International Women’ Day) and the 16 days of activism.

B) CAPACITY BUILDING

Recognizing the fact that it is important to create a critical mass that can advocate for women’s rights, one of the Zeest core strategies is to build the capacity of both state and non-state actors to effectively work and support the women and girls survivors of violence. Zeest capacity building initiatives have gone beyond one-off workshops, to a more strategic partnership where the capacity building has involved need assessments, copulative design of training, mentoring and refreshers and in some cases policy advocacy and change.

The capacity building initiatives are in various dimensions, including

• Self-growth workshops (self-awareness, anger management, communication skills, stress management etc).
• Workshops on issues like Gender awareness and Sensitization,  Violence Against Women.
• Training of trainers for professionals on issues like gender sensitization, violence against women, psychosocial support service after disasters and displacement, case management of violence against women.
• Capacity building of women survivors of violence in vocational skills through internship opportunities and skill building courses.

Zeest has worked extensively with the state by building the capacity of the state-run shelters/centres to improve the quality of services in these centres. Zeest’s in its three-year collaborative initiative worked with the former Ministry of Women Development and was engaged in capacity building of the staff of all 23 Women Centers operated under former Ministry of Women Development across Pakistan.

Zeest also assists organizations working on VAW by providing training and technical support on putting in place minimum standards in an organization that ensures ethical handling of the women and children survivors of violence.

C) ADVOCACY, NETWORKING AND LINKAGES

Shelter Reforms:

Zeest having extensive experience of dealing with cases of violence against women has been engaged in advocacy especially for women shelter reforms since 2000. Zeest in this context supported the capacity building, policy development and implementation for shelters in collaboration with government. The major work done by Zeest include:

• Developing Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs) for Women Crises Centers in partnership with the former Ministry of Women Development (2007-2010) was one of the major achievements of Zeest program. The SOPs were notified by the ministry and were implemented in Women Centers.
• Developing SOPs for Dar ul Amans (Govt. run shelters) in Sindh that were notified and implemented in by Ministry in 2014.
• establishing an alliance in 2011-2013 with two other well-known organizations, Shirkat Gah and Dastak that had the expertise of working with women centers and Dar ul Amans (Govt. run shelters). Zeest with the aim of shelter reforms worked extensively in Sindh and ensured the implementation of the SOPs in Dar ul Amans regarding infrastructure renovation and provision of basic utilities to the residents. The Social Welfare Department Sindh increased the budget allocations for improving the systems and functions of Dar ul Amans in response to Rozan’s interventions and advocacy for the same.
• Psychological counselling services at Dar ul Aman and crises center in Punjab and Islamabad (Federal Capital) in 2013-2016.
• Need assessment of Dar ul Amans (Government-run shelters) in KP and developing SOPs in collaboration with UN women for Dar ul Amans and Women crisis Centers in KP.
• Zeest has also been a member of the NGO Management Committee of Islamabad and Rawalpindi Women Center to support the overall management of such structures.

Hurmat Network:

Rozan team through extensive experience while working with people who come in direct contact with women facing violence sensed a general lack of awareness, expertise & sensitivity in service providers. Therefore, Rozan, after an extensive consultative process with all stakeholders including government departments, organizations working on VAW established a network called ‘Hurmat’ & developed ‘ethical guidelines’ (on approach & systems for intake, referral, follow up, service provision & trainings etc.) that provide a set of standard procedures essential to make survivors feel safe, secure & trusted.

D) BUILDING ALLIANCES

Zeest has been an active member of many networks including EVAG and WAF.

In recent years there have been many collaboration initiated by Zeest including,

• MoU with Ombudsperson Secretariat KP
• MoU with University of Peshawar,
• Collaboration with Quaid e Azam university for research work
• MoU with Shaheed Benazir Women Crises center Islamabad
• MoU with strategic reform Unit; and Women Protection Authority, Government of Punjab.

E) RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION

Against all Odds: Post Shelter Lives of Women Survivors of Violence

Over the years Zeest has been involved in research-based initiatives and publications on different topics. Zeest through its experience of working with women survivors in shelter homes found that the post shelter journey of women survivors received less attention in national policies and programs at both government and private shelters. To fill this gap in knowledge and policy and drawing inspiration from field experience of several years Rozan conducted a qualitative research study, titled “Against all odds: Post shelter lives of women survivors of violence” by investigating the post-shelter trajectories of women survivors of violence. The study advocating a long-term approach to survivor support and integration presented recommendations drawn from the key findings of the research intended for to the policymakers working on violence against women including the Ministry of Human Rights, Provincial Ministries of Social Welfare and Provincial Women Development Departments as well as for the privately-run women shelters. The research serves strong evidence based advocacy initiative to work on Post shelter, which is a neglected area in policy and implementation.

Zeest developed a number of posters, guidelines, brochures to be used in different advocacy initiatives.