Financial Literacy Made Fun!

Exciting times for the BLISS girls! We’re launching financial literacy workshops at the Attock schools in the last week of March.

The curriculum has been developed by the Asian Development Bank and Empowerment Thru Creative Integration (ECI), funded by the State Bank of Pakistan, and will be delivered by Bearing Point, a management and technology consultancy. It is part of a nationwide financial literacy program, of which BLISS is among the selected pilot communities.

Who Makes These Awesome Newsletters Anyway?

We’re in month 3 of our newsletters, and everyone loves them! We’ve been told they are beautiful, informative, easy to read, brief and just overall fabulous. Thanks guys, you rock for sending us feedback!

Now, want to learn more about the wonderful lady who makes these newsletters and sends them to you? Read on! Haven’t subscribed to our newsletter? Stop right now and DO IT.

Meet Mehwaesh Islam, our Communications Director.

She is a PhD student at Imperial College London, and manages our social media (yes those awesome Facebook posts and tweets!), email correspondence, promotional materials, online campaigns, and is generally a source of much optimism and energy!

She is a passionate advocate for education and economic independence for women in the developing world. Not a surprise; she comes from the land of Mohammad Yunus and BRAC!

Says Mehwaesh:

Working with BLISS is part of my service journey. The work I do for BLISS may be small in the grand scheme of things – my contribution may not change the world, but it definitely changes me.

When she isn’t making our newsletters or saving the world through science, Mehwaesh goes to the cinema, dances, and dreams about traveling to New Zealand.

Meet Maryam, The Brain Behind Our Bags!

You’ve seen our stunning handbags! Want to meet the talented woman behind the designs?

This is Maryam Tahir Khan, our Head Product Designer. She is an alumna of the National College of Arts, Lahore, where she majored in Painting and Textiles. Her work has been exhibited at the famous Alhamra Art Gallery as well as other renowned galleries around Pakistan, and retailed in Pakistan and the US.

So why does Maryam do what she does — designing handbags for BLISS?

In her own words:

As a painter, I always seek a sense of fulfillment in my work. With BLISS, I’ve found much more. Not only do I get to experiment extensively with my creativity, but the thought that my artistic contributions are adding to these adolescent girls’ education and skills development, that it’s helping them stand on their own two feet as educated professionals, serves the purpose of my very being.

The girls’ enthusiasm and hard work inspires me to do more. My designs are an ode to this beautiful land of ours, its history, and its people. Each design comes with a story that we all can relate to. I can honestly say that with BLISS, I’ve found my calling.

Maryam lives in Lahore with her husband Tahir and her boisterous 3 year old son, Rafaye. These days, she is busy designing our new line of handbags!

BLISS Meets Sughar Women

We’re starting off the new year with some thrilling news: BLISS is scaling to Mirpur Sakro, Thatta in the Southern province of Sindh, where we will start working with 100 women and girls. Thatta was badly affected by the 2010 floods, with devastating effects on livelihoods.

Our executing partner on the ground is Sughar – a program of PDI (Participatory Development Initiatives), founded by the indomitable Khalida Brohi, also an Unreasonable fellow in 2010.

This past weekend, I visited Sughar’s vocational center in Mirpur Sakro, accompanied by Khalida, Jeremy Higgs, Manager of Operations for EcoEnergy Finance, and a dear friend Seher Suleman (who shares with the rest of us a hunger to change the world).

A 3 hour ride from Karachi, much of it on a dirt road with agricultural wasteland on either side, brought us to a large wooden shed that served as Sughar’s vocational center for the village. Men and women from the village filed in with smiles on their faces.

The women were thrilled to be able to showcase their work, which was so beautiful that Seher and I couldn’t resist whipping out whatever cash we had to buy some of it off of them right there and then. While none of them spoke Urdu, Khalida patiently translated everything they said.

In conversations with the women, I found out that none of the girls in the village were enrolled in school beyond the age of 12. The main reason seemed to be a lack of female teachers, without which it was culturally unacceptable for the girls to attend school. The teachers had been sent/appointed by the government, and repeated requests to send female teachers had been ignored. The other reason was early marriages — most girls were married off by the time they were 15. We visited the only school in the village, with one classroom that was used for both boys and girls attending all grades.

Jeremy had a fascinating conversation with the men about selling solar lamps to them, since the village didn’t have electricity. We exchanged some laughs as the men told a story about how their mobile phones were taken to the nearby city every week by one of them to be charged. The women jumped in as soon as Jeremy asked what difficulties the village faced without electricity, all talking at the same time. They wanted to have lights for cooking, feeding their children, doing household chores. Their lives had to be paused from sunset to sunrise.

A few of the men wanted the solar lamps for free, even though the monthly installments Jeremy had worked out for them equalled the amount they spent on kerosene every month. Notwithstanding the fact that the lamp would be theirs to own in 8 months, that they would never have to pay for kerosene again, and that the lamps were far superior to kerosene in terms of the light they produced as well as safety and health-wise. But too many NGOs had come and gone and offered free solutions that didn’t last beyond a few months. Free was still attractive.

Jeremy did succeed in striking a deal with the men, and now has an order from a neighboring village as well.

I left the village as I had left Attock almost two years ago — a little heartbroken at the limited resources this community had available to them, but really excited about the opportunity this presented for BLISS.

I can’t wait for us to work with these women! And with Khalida, someone whose work I’ve admired since I first met her last year. Here’s to new beginnings — 2012 promises to be a good year!

BLISS Is Going Global!

Well, friends, it’s time. We’re going global!

Through our network of female ambassadors, our handbags will now be available in Paris, London, Boulder, Seattle & Nairobi this December!

Who are our female ambassadors? They’re women who’re fashion conscious, but also want to make the world a better place! Meet two of these fabulous women below:

Sherri Leopard, our ambassador in Boulder, CO is a long-time entrepreneur who believes she has lived an incredibly blessed life. As a result, she is a huge believer in the power of small business to change lives. Her dream is that one day, anyone who has the drive and passion to start a business can do so. She also recognizes that this cannot happen without education.

Sherri chose to become our ambassador because she believes that BLISS is providing a concrete way to keep young Pakistani women in school — the first step on the journey to creating a new generation of self-sufficient women!

Jill Jacquot is our ambassador in Paris. She is thrilled to work with BLISS because it marries the two sides of her. When she was in high school, she had 2 dreams: to make a positive impact on the world, and to work in the fashion industry. She joined the Peace Corps and worked for Ralph Lauren — 2 very different worlds. Now thanks to BLISS, she says, her two worlds have met!

Jill is a communications coach; she specializes in helping entrepreneurs and not-for-profits learn how to leverage the power of public speaking. She believes that you can make a difference through public speaking that reaches the heart!

Welcome on board, Sherri & Jill! Welcome, also, our other wonderful ambassadors: Cara Mohammadian in Seattle,  Ayesha Mustafa in London and Enid Otieno in Nairobi!

Want to become a female ambassador for us? Drop us a line!