Managing Director of Kashf Foundation Roshaneh Zafar has said that they have disbursed nearly four million loans worth over Rs 95 billion among under-privileged women to enhance their role in society by improving their economic status and offering them microfinance business loans for financial independence and empowerment.
The Kashf Foundation is Pakistan's first non-profit microfinance and wealth management organisation founded in 1996. It is also regarded as the first microfinance institution (MFI) of Pakistan that uses village banking methodology in microcredit to alleviate poverty by providing affordable financial and non-financial services to low income households, particularly for women to build their capacity and enhance their economic role. With headquarters in Lahore, the Foundation has regional offices in five major cities and over 200 branches across Pakistan.
In an exclusive interview with Business Recorder the other day, Kashf Foundation Managing Director Roshaneh Zafar spoke about various challenges of the under-privileged women and how they are working for their empowerment and integration in society.
"We work towards building entrepreneurial and financial management skills of women through capacity building, trainings and workshops. So far, 1.5 million women have been trained in enhancing their financial management skills and capabilities, 26,170 women were trained in business management and development skills and 1,567 women graduated from our vocational skill development workshops in various marketable trades. In addition, 842 participants were sensitized on child protection and safeguarding trainings to protect children from sexual child abuse," Roshaneh said.
She said just providing loans to women through microfinance can be meaningless unless the women are also taught, trained and mentored in how to productively and efficiently use these loans. So, at Kashf, the capacity-building of women is intrinsically linked to their financial inclusion.
"We have also focused on safeguarding low-income households with credit safety nets for life insurance and micro-health insurance to protect the family from health shocks. Kashf Sehatmand Zindagi Bima programme offers a comprehensive health insurance programme for the entire family with 2.9 million policy holders so far. Kashf Credit Life Insurance has insured 6.4 million lives under life insurance," added the MD.
According to Zafar, the Foundation is also actively involved in bringing about social change via television productions for the masses. Our recent drama serials and mini-series, such as Udaari, Rehai and Aakhri Station have covered topics such as child abuse, prostitution, early marriages, depression and the like. The response has been phenomenal so far, and the outreach is much wider, since a huge percentage of the population has access to television sets. We continue to strive for the betterment of our society by choosing sensitive topics which need to have light shed upon them, she pledged.
Since over 20 years of our establishment, the Foundation helped over 1.5 million women in establishing their businesses and the results shows that on a year on year basis, over 60 percent of women have reported increase in their gross profits and over 30 percent are able to save on a regular basis, she recalled.
To a query about her professional background, Roshaneh said: "I am an economist by training and studied finance and economics at the Wharton Business School - University of Pennsylvania at undergraduate level. Later, I went on to pursue a Masters in International and Development Economics at Yale. I worked for four years at the World Bank in Islamabad looking at the social impact of World Bank projects through a gender lens. It was during my time at the World Bank that my observations about the dynamics of a low-income household in Pakistan against the odds of power, control and access to resources found new meaning for me; and especially in context to the role of women and their inability to influence choices and lack of financial resources to invest in a better future for their children."
When asked what inspired her of establishing a social organization focusing on women empowerment, she said: "The time I spent in documenting how investments in water and sanitation impacted on the lives of women, through my fieldwork at the Bank, was extremely important, for it brought me into direct engagement with hundreds of women from under-privileged communities.
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