Self-help group gives Tajik flood survivor hope, skills and a home
After a flood devastated a Rasht Valley community, a UN Women supported self-help group helped a survivor change her life and build a future for her family.Date:
Latofat Navruzova and her family lost everything in a flood two years ago in the Rasht District of Tajikistan. Her local administration promised to allocate land in safe areas for flood victims to construct new houses. Latofat, her husband and their three children hoped for a new house and a new beginning.
Their multiple requests for a new plot of land went nowhere for almost two years.
“Each time we applied to the local administration, we would face new bureaucratic barriers and demands for additional papers,” Latofat explains. “Therefore, our family had to live in a small administrative office with no basic amenities. Our children, especially our three-year old daughter, would get sick.”
During that difficult period after the flood, the local women of Furudgoh village in Rasht Valley set up a self-help group with support from the NGO Najibulo, which received assistance from UN Women.
Latofat joined the local artisans self-help group ‘Bahor’ or Spring, which produces handcrafts. Her hard work and beautiful embroidery attracted her peers’ notice. They intervened on her behalf with the local administration and succeeded in getting her a plot of land to build a house. Her family, neighbours and friends volunteered to build a modest temporary home.
“This success story inspires every woman in our village,” says Natalia Sharipova, head of the Bahor self-help group. “Now women are confident they can reach high goals if they stand with each other.”
Since 2014, over 3,000 women in Tajikistan have formed self-help groups thanks to the UN Women project, Empowering Communities with Better Livelihood and Social Protection. Funded by the Joint UN Human Security Trust Fund Programme, the project targets vulnerable women in the Rasht Valley and Khatlon regions, particularly the growing number of women abandoned by a mass outflow of male labour migrants.
Today, UN Women supports more than 500 women, members of 60 different self-help groups in Rasht district of Tajikistan, to help them fulfil their dreams. Its programme assists women to financially support their families and empowers them to claim and protect their rights. Each self-help group of roughly eight to ten women receives training, capacity building, legal advice, or whatever it takes for them to reach their goals for themselves and their families.