Success Story

Photo: M Emry, courtesy www.ajws.org

Teaching Girls, Reviving an Art

Nara Mughlan, Pakistan — In this village about 110 miles from Pakistan’s capital, and in similar rural villages, women and girls have little access to healthcare, cannot own land, and have no voice in decision making. They have high malnutrition rates and considerably low literacy rates even by Pakistan’s standards.

So when Sameena Nazir and her colleagues were looking for ways to keep village girls in school, they decided to teach them how to make papier-mâché products.

“Older girls and young women have little access to education beyond primary school and almost no opportunities for jobs in rural areas,” said Nazir, a former journalist who established the Potohar Organization for Development Advocacy (PODA) in 2003. “So in order to provide additional education and income, we taught them how to recycle paper into papier-mâché products.”

Although papier-mâché products were being made in many villages, the center of the industry was in Muzaffarabad, in the mountains on the Pakistan side of Kashmir. This beautiful art form was first developed in Persia and later introduced to Kashmir in the 15th century.

In Muzaffarabad, as many as 200 small shops lined the streets, with Kashmiri artisans teaching their children to keep this ancient art alive and thriving. In 2003, Nazir convinced some master artisans to go to the Potohar region and teach the village girls. Little did she know that her project would be the key to the revival of Pakistan’s papier-mâché industry after an earthquake leveled Muzaffarabad.

On October 8, 2005, the strongest earthquake in a century struck the area, with its epicenter near Muzaffarabad. Over 73,000 people were killed and more than 3 million were left homeless. The Pakistan side of Kashmir was hardest hit, and the shops of the papier-mâché artisans in Muzaffarabad were completely destroyed.

PODA joined hundreds of local and international organizations that offered immediate relief to the victims. PODA focused on women and girls, helping nearly 7,000 of them. Its first of 12 assessment trips was led by a master papier-mâché teacher who had instructions to bring any surviving artisans to the lowlands, where PODA had host families for them to stay with during the winter.

After the relief efforts, PODA opened the Artisan Support Center in Muzaffarabad to help restore livelihood activities and preserve art forms unique to the region. With the support of The Global Fund for Children, 70 young boys and girls are being given training; 25 of them are being taught the art of papier-mâché by artisans who survived the earthquake.

Meanwhile, in Nara Mughlan, some of the first trainees of PODA won awards as the best folk artisans in Pakistan for their papier-mâché products. Their best products are also available through GFC grantee partner Global Goods Partners. Thanks to the girls of PODA, the ancient art of papier-mâché is alive and well again in Pakistan.

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