Our Heroes
Name: ASHIMA KAUL
Project: ATHWAAS
Location: KASHMIR
There are two reasons why our latest Champions Project is so important to us. Firstly it's a chance to support the vital and urgent work of a fantastic women's group in Kashmir. Secondly we can pledge long term funding to the remarkable woman who runs the group...
Mohamed Osman, our international liaison went to meet Ashima Kaul in June 2007, and described her as "the most amazing woman I've ever met." She has the ability to find common ground, cut through mistrust and expose what unites rather than divides.
Ashima is passionate about the effect the prolonged violence in Kashmir has had on women. She risked her life to report on the 200 young, healthy women she saw queuing up outside a hospital on a cold winter's morning waiting to be sterilized. Better that, they told her, than be raped and bear an illegitimate child. Ashima demanded local Kashmiri women be given a voice and from there the group ATHWAAS was born.
Despite being caught in the crossfire many times, the ATHWAAS team brings together widows of both soldiers and insurgents in Kashmir, from the Indian and Pakistani areas. They include Muslims (Sunni, Shia, Ahmedia) Sikhs and Hindus.
Athwaas has already built links between elite women in both countries, and has created five Samanbals - centres where women can meet, work together on projects such as sewing or microfinance, but with the core aiming of sharing strategies to create peace on the ground.
The project Champions will fund will enable Athwaas to create five more salambals, involving 200 women, and work more extensively on the Pakistan side of the line of control. They aim to get local authorities across the border divide working together when violent incidents occur to resolve them before they escalate, to persuade young men from both sides of the conflict not to take up arms, and to have a strong voice advocating for peace in the forthcoming elections.
You can be part of Ashima's back up team.
