Raaji Rooms - Rural Incubators

The pandemic unequally affected the world’s populations. Girls and women, especially from rural contexts in Sindh, were hit harder from lost education and income opportunities, increased domestic violence, shrinking health facilities, greater household & caretaking responsibilities. Gender-based-discriminations must be countered at a grassroots level before existing gender digital divides & climate displacement become greater.

Raaji-Rooms are digitally-inclusive learning centers/safe spaces in homes of rural women. More than community centers, they are a sustainable digital solution for women's post-pandemic socio-cultural, economic and health recovery. Each Raaji-Room is equipped with a technological starter-kit and curriculum for virtual training, entrepreneurship, and mentoring.

We saw need for Raaji-Rooms while scaling our menstrual-health chatbot in rural Pakistan & experiences at The Do School, Femtech Lab, and The Nest i/o informed its curriculum.  

Rural women are a quarter of the global population & successful pilots help us replicate in other regions. 

As the world searches for a new normal, it is necessary that digitally marginalized communities like rural women and girls can jump on this bandwagon now otherwise they’ll become more excluded in the world.  

While edtech innovations & telehealth services grew exponentially in Pakistan, unfortunately, their usability in rural Sindh, especially by women and girls hasn’t been tested, promoted, prioritized, encouraged or facilitated. 

In pre-pandemic times, >50 percent of Pakistani women owned a mobile phone (GSMA 2019). Phone usage doesn’t always translate into internet usage. For e.g, 70 million Pakistanis are mobile-subscribers but only 29 million are 4G-users (Jazz). According to the (EIU) Inclusive Internet Index, Pakistan ranks last for internet inclusivity in South Asia. 

Digital literacy is crucial for: 

1. Access to government services & public health campaigns  

2. Dispelling myths around reproductive health

3. Online Education as school close 

4. Selling products to new audiences

5. Opening & using mobile wallets

While affordability & awareness issues keep rural women and girls from accessing the internet, other reasons include:

1. Fear of tech

2. Fear of harassment  

3. Patriarchal attitudes towards education   

While startup incubators emerged in urban centers, they were inaccessible for rural women due to: 

1. language barriers 

2. Inadequate curriculum for first-time smartphone/internet users

3. Mobility issues

Raaji Rooms operates by:

1. Selecting one rural woman community leader who is educated & trusted by the community & has access to a room in her house for community gatherings 

2. Equipping the room with a smartphone, tablet, projector, laptop and wifi. 

3. Leaders receive training on using equipment through existing partnerships with NGOs SRSO, TRDP & NRSP. 

4. Raaji Rooms join Zoom sessions with local and international trainers & explore a unique curriculum designed keeping in mind their living environment, lifestyles, and contexts. 

By transforming rooms into digital hubs, we connect thousands of small towns and villages into the mainstream economic pathway. The curriculum introduced is designed specifically for zero-literacy audiences & first-time-internet-users is introduced. 

The curriculum improves knowledge on:

• Using devices/apps to full potential (beyond whatsapp)

• Existing government programs e.g Ehsaas

• Reproductive Health (maternal & menstrual education)

• Developing a Doer-Mindset (human-centric design)

• Solving small business challenges through mentoring 

Raaji Rooms makes use of existing platforms:

• Gmail for networking

• Zoom for Mentoring

• Facebook for Business 

• Youtube for self-learning

• Whatsapp groups for community-building 

• USPWC Million Women Mentors Program

Currently, two villages (Dundh & Wahid Bux Gopang) have Raaji Rooms championed by Uzma & Urbeli with the support of Sindh Rural Support Program (SRSO). 

• ‘Raaji Rooms’ is primarily focused on women in rural Sindh who have been hit hard and disproportionately by socio-economic issues. Not only have they been deprived of health and education services for decades, they’ve been kept away from economic and political opportunities and stuck in generational poverty, debt bondage, slavery, forced marriages, honour killings, child marriages, domestic violence, abuse and malnutrition.

• When extreme weather patterns, shrinking agriculture, lingering droughts and dry spells affect the region, rural women in Sindh are displaced and become climate refugees or migrants.  With religious intolerance on the rise, girls and women living in Hindu-majority villages of Sindh also face the consistent fear of forced religious conversions.  

• Raaji Rooms will build on the development work already implemented by the EU-funded SUCCESS Programme in promoting women empowerment and household poverty reduction through social mobilization and a network of socio-economic interventions to build capacity, critical thinking, decision-making, and economic uplift in Sindh’s rural women. The rural women leaders trained under the SUCCESS Programme like Uzma and Urbeli are now ready to be champions for the Raaji Rooms and lead their community to the next level.  

• Our champions Uzma and Urbeli leading Raaji rooms are powerful forces in their own right. Both in their early twenties, they have received an education till tenth grade and their families (fathers and brothers) support their dreams, vision and passion. They have already worked extensively in their own villages as teachers and activists promoting maternal & menstrual health, ending child marriages, and helping rural families receive government support during Covid-19 lockdowns.

• While the two of them are based in the small villages of Wahid Bux Gopang & Dhundh with 100+ families living in those villages, their influence goes far beyond their own village to other surrounding areas. Currently, their main source of income has come from rearing livestock, doing embroidery and creating handiwork. Both villages have internet accessibility and we have connected for virtual meetings several times.  

• Take a tour into their village here and here. 

• Urbeli and Uzma are both active smartphone users, who have been engaging with us regularly via Whatsapp, and attended our virtual Menstrual Hygiene Day on 28th May and met/spoke/listened to our speakers from Pakistan, India and Germany.  Read their digital readiness questionnaire.

• With MOUs signed with the other other NGOs implementing the SUCCESS Programme, we are also identifying and outlining identifying outlining other women leaders who can replicate Raaji rooms in different villages of Sindh and eventually all of Pakistan.

• Raaji rooms provide an internet-enabled, accessible, inclusive, women & girl-friendly space & ecosystem for creativity, learning, innovating, mentoring and training.

‘Raaji Rooms’ aligns with the first & second dimension as rural women in Sindh earn less than $40 per month & both Raaji Rooms are located in villages 2-hours away from Sukkur & in areas affected by climate-change. 

Raaji Rooms bring rural women front and center of the digital transformation taking place worldwide. With community centers shut down, schools closed due to covid-19, women & girls are stuck at home with no space to develop as individuals & cut off from sharing their voice with the world. Our curriculum & space provides a breeding ground for discussions on one's capabilities. 

In March 2021, Aurat Raaj, the parent organisation of Raaji Rooms, signed MOUs with Sindh Rural Support Organisation, Thardeep Rural Development Program and National Rural Support program. These NGOs are the implementing field partners of the EU-funded SUCCESS Programme and gave Aurat Raaj direct access to 600,000 rural households and 29,000 women-led Community Institutions in 8 districts of Sindh. 

This extensive network only covers the project districts under the SUCCESS Programme, the 3 NGOs implementing SUCCESS have an outreach that extends beyond the figures quoted here. The potential for rapid scalability of the Raaji Rooms initiative is massive since it builds on the existing networks of SUCCESS since 2015 but is not dependent upon SUCCESS since Aurat Raaj has its own official partnership through MOUs with the 3 implementing field partner NGOs.   

• Innovation is a matter of perspective. A digital hub may not sound innovative to societies that have had ample resources to develop a highly digital lifestyle but to rural communities of Sindh, especially for women, this is nothing short of life-changing. 

• Sindh’s rural women are already marginalized physically due to limited public transport and infrastructure facilities. The COVID-19 induced lockdown put further restrictions on their movement. These physical hindrances are mitigated through a digital community hub where rural women can directly interact with people without relying on intermediaries to speak for them.  

• Raaji Rooms employs a ‘glocal’ approach to digital inclusion utilizing local strategies to achieve global goals. Raaji Rooms works with communities and local NGOs to curate a local-language curriculum designed for the needs of rural women. 

• We believe in practicing equitable ownership. Raaji Rooms is designed to be run and managed by rural women partners who have an equal stake in this venture. They participate as partners, not beneficiaries.

• Having worked extensively with our partners in Sindh, we have developed a profound understanding around their educational and health needs. 

• Raaji Rooms works in a hybrid environment combining existing on-ground community networks with new/emerging digital linkages. Our partner NGOs and rural women community leaders are working on-ground since 2015. 

• Raaji Rooms radically impacts rural economic growth, adds new jobs, increases investment interest and expands connectivity to the whole province.  

• Raaji Rooms makes sustainable use of existing/available spaces in women’s homes & provides them an honoraria for providing that space. 

Currently we have two rural women champions who are running Raaji Rooms in two different villages of Sindh. Each one of the villages has a 100+ female population. 

However, with our partnership with EU-funded SUCCESS program and implemented by Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN), National Rural Support Programme (NRSP), Sindh Rural Support Organisation (SRSO) and Thardeep Rural Development Programme (TRDP), we have access to pilot test in eight districts of Sindh, namely: Kambar Shahdadkot, Larkana, Dadu, Jamshoro, Matiari, Sujawal, Tando Allahyar and Tando Muhammad Khan.

In one year's time, we hope to have 15 functional Raaji Rooms in different districts, that are providing entrepreneurial and digital literacy training to 15,000 rural women and girls. 

In five years, we hope to have set up 75 Raaji Rooms all over Sindh & Punjab and made an impact on the lives of at least 75,000 women and girls.  

• Getting textual and visual data from the rural women in the form of voice notes and photographs.

• Zoom session recordings 

• Questionnaires and surveys from initial focus group discussions (FGDs)

• Collaborations with the M&E teams at SRSO for detailed reporting and monitoring activities 

• Team interactions with rural women through interviews 

Raaji-Rooms is a multi-stakeholder-partnership. Building on work done by the different stakeholders & synergizing together for mutual, long-term, and sustainable benefit whilst working with implementing NGOs & rural women leaders who mobilize Raaji Rooms. 

Core Leadership Team: 3-4

Implementing NGOs: 5-10  

Rural Women Leaders: 2

External Collab Enterprises: 3-5

SUCCESS RSPs = provides the on-ground physical network to rural communities, established trust with local people, worked to reduce household poverty reduction and promote socio-economic mobility, dispelled misconceptions and taboos about women empowerment, built capacity and critical thinking and confidence and decision-making power for women among their communities, women more respected and treated equally now as a result, less gender-based discrimination, more educational, advocational, and economic opportunities for womena and girls among rural communities - therefore, a progressive, welcoming and safe community environment to foster digital inclusion and create Raaji Rooms without antagonizing local people. 

Community Institutions - a three-tiered social mobilization process for creating women-led unions or organizations at a neighborhood, village and district level. These Community Institutions created under SUCCESS are run by rural women who gain awareness and advocacy training along with a network of economic interventions to effectively lead their community into a more developed future. These women leaders are respected in their society and will act as advocates for Raaji Rooms because they understand the benefit Raaji Rooms will bring to their community.    

 Aurat Raaj - connected to the digital information and global entrepreneurial world and can bring these linkages to the rural women leaders of the Community Institutions fostered under SUCCESS.  

We believe in equitable ownership and a participatory approach towards Raaji Rooms. There is no concept of a unidirectional power dynamic or a top-bottom hierarchy when it comes to leading and managing Raaji Rooms. Each of our partners, whether rural community members, implementing NGOs, Aurat Raaj, or external collaborating enterprises, bring a crucial and valuable perspective and skillset to the table which is essential for the Raaji Room venture’s success. There is no concept of beneficiary in this venture; we are all equal stakeholders with equal decision-making power and equal seats at the table. 

We set this approach into action during our initial focus group discussions with the SUCCESS NGOs and rural women leaders. After pitching the work of Aurat Raaj, the NGOs and rural women leaders directly approached Aurat Raaj for further collaborations as developing linkages is part of the SUCCESS post-project sustainability strategy. There was no obligation on the part of the NGOs and rural women leaders to work with Aurat Raaj, they approached of their own volition and signed MOUs with Aurat Raaj separate from the SUCCESS programme as proof of their willingness to be part of this work. Raaji Rooms is one such project that resulted from this MOU signing. 

Had it not been for Solve's support in 2019, piloting our chatbot across the country with various stakeholders would have been close to impossible. 

Winning the prestigious Solve really provided us with the validation & confidence to take our product to market. It attracted various other supporters and funders to our cause including BMW foundation, vodafone, Roddenberry. 

We continue to meet/get to know and be inspired by Solve alumni. 

This year, we encouraged many other innovators to take part in Solve because we know what an incredible experience it has been for us. 

The pandemic shifted everything for girls and women in Pakistan. While we continue to scale our chatbot in rural Pakistan, and believe strongly in the power of tech for good, we feel none of the apps or software or social platforms are meaningful until and unless there is digital inclusion & access for all. 

We feel that Solvers can use their influence, innovative mindset and understanding of emerging technologies to build accessible infrastructures & programs for their countries.  

We need tech partners specifically to furnish equipment in our Raaji Rooms

• Data Plans Provider

• Mobile Phone Provider 

• Laptop Provider

• Projector Provider

• Hardware and software set-up and maintenance of the Raaji Rooms

We need partners who can evaluate the effectiveness of our digital literacy curriculum

- MIT Students & faculty

- We see many winners from Solve 2020 Learning for Girls & women challenge as potential partners (girls4girls , Thaki)

- Solve Innovation Future

- Peer Advice & mentoring

We'd like to be considered but we are currently not 

18 million people in South Asia have been forced to migrate due to climate change and up to 63 million people could be displaced by 2050. A large majority of these environmental migrants belong to Pakistan and concentrate in the southern coastal belt of Sindh which has been worst hit by climate change witnessing drastic changes in rain patterns and increased droughts, floods & groundwater depleting. 

Women in rural Sindh are the managers of natural resources (gathering food, water, and energy) by virtue of being primarily responsible for the household. This is why environmental degradation directly impacts women and girls -  as droughts worsen in Sindh, women and girls travel further distances spending more time acquiring water & other resources.

The helplessness climate migrants feel, especially women in providing basic resources to their family for survival, leads to developing depression and anxiety. Certain districts of Sindh have become suicide hotspots, with many suicides going unreported. Migrating to overly-populated urban centers like Karachi comes with its fair challenges especially with jobs disappearing due to continuous lockdowns. 

We plan to use the Prize to provide climate migrants a conducive environment where creative skills can be taught remotely, and new jobs/services/products can be created in the process. 

Leverage learnings from past winner “Humans in the Loop”, we want to explore how our audience can collect and curate datasets which can be used to train computer vision models. Most importantly, we'd use the prize to augment the voice, visibility, struggles of Sindh's climate migrants.  

Just like HP’s mission, Raaji Room & partners also believe that true digital equity requires: 

• hardware (e.g., laptop or projectors);

•  connectivity (e.g., access to the Internet);

• quality, relevant content (e.g., learning materials); 

• digital literacy (e.g., skills to use the technology). 

We want to use the HP prize for acquiring hardware, connectivity for our audience, introducing existing free learning content (e.g chatbot for menstrual education, audiopedia, Orenda Taleemabad) after taking them through a contextualised digital literacy curriculum.  

We already see a partnership opportunity  with HP’s Partnership and Technology for Humanity accelerator as we are serving underserved communities through local leaders. We would contribute knowledge and research on the needs of the population.  

We know that HP’s 330,000 existing staff already engages in volunteer efforts and we’d love to engage them specifically in advice, consulting and mentoring our star women-led startups.

Considering 93 percent of adult women in Pakistan do not have a formal financial account, Raaji Rooms poses a potential to not only introduce digital literacy but also promote financial inclusion. Currently, procedural bottlenecks, paperwork and the lack of a national identity card holds the majority of women in rural Sindh back from opening their accounts. Getting a job, verifying your date of birth, and living a secure life depends greatly on these prerequisites. 

We envision one day implementing programs in Raaji Rooms like “World Food Programme Building Blocks” where payments for essentials can be made seamlessly with iris detection and without opening one’s wallet while also keeping the identities of climate refugees safe and secure. With crypto wallets, they can also receive payments for their products/services/work directly.  

In January 2017, WFP initiated a proof-of-concept project in Sindh province, Pakistan, to test the capabilities of using blockchain for authenticating and registering beneficiary transactions, we hope to partner with Building Blocks to pilot it further with our beneficiaries. 

In the past, we had developed a financial education chatbot mvp for the state bank inclusion competition but could not build it further as the competition was delayed due to Covid-19 and seed funding could not be secured.