Mme France Marquet representative of SAF to UNESCO, contributed to the International forum 'Role of women in fighting poverty

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News UNESCO headquarters Paris - 3rd August 2015



I am not a public speaker. So I thought it better to start this talk with a picture of Anita. When you leave this forum, I would like you to never forget this radiant young woman. She will explain later on how informal education has changed her life.

This already very significant title introduces a dense topic which of course will be difficult to deal with in so little time but let us try to locate the area that concerns us.


First let’s take a look at the map of South Asia…

• With its 1.6 billion (one billion six hundred million) people, South Asia is the 2nd poorest region in the world after Sub-Saharan Africa. • In 1985 the Dhaka declaration saw the birth of SAARC (South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation) with its headquarters in Kathmandu, Nepal, and today, 30 years later, is now made up of 8 member states: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, The Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Lifelong learning formal and informal. We will start with formal learning which in the region is provided mostly by the states. The Subcontinent is a region of huge diversity and massive inequalities.


Kamla Bhasin is a prominent women’s rights activist, founder of «Women’s Initiative for Peace in South Asia ». With these words she places emphasis on the constructive side of oral tradition which often originates from popular common sense and has allowed millions of poverty stricken women to survive. But then that is far from being enough

Listen carefully”, we did so when at UNESCO’s request and in connection with its « Program of Integrated Education and Capacity Building for Adolescent Girls and Children for Asia », SAF contacted Maiti-Nepal, the NGO working to retrieve and rehabilitate destitute women, giving them training in computers, a skill which will help them to get «respectable » jobs and thus overcome the cultural taboo which prevented them from being accepted back into society

A similar project was set up in collaboration with Sarvodya in Sri Lanka. On the recommendation of the SAF Sri Lanka Chairperson, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, the SAF funded the « Ma-Sevana Teenage Mothers project ». This project is designed to house and rehabilitate abandoned teenage mothers who have fallen victim to rape or other forms of sexual abuse

But we went a step further when In Nepal, at the request of the SAF Nepal Chairperson, formally director of World Health Organization


together with the University and Ministry of Health, who asked us to help to set up a program for the training of midwives and health care auxiliaries; this program allows young women from conflict zones and the poorest districts to do a 1-year training course at the University and then go back home in order to practise their new profession while benefiting from an annual monitoring from their University

SAF Phool Ban Nursery School children


In India the Vice Chancellor of Kashmir University appealed to us to help start a specific class for poor young unemployed girls to become pre-primary teachers, non-existent in the region; this training course takes place at the Institute of Home Sciences in Srinagar and lasts 9 months

Once they get their diplomas the new teachers are offered educational equipment as an incentive before they go back to their remote villages and establish their own pre-primary « Phool Ban Nursery Schools” in cooperation with their local communities

A similar project was launched at University of Jammu. Girls are chosen from a variety of districts in the region; they are provided living accommodations at the university and taught useful skills such as printing technology and textiles, beauty therapy and herbs, arts and crafts, mushroom cultivation, and beekeeping. They are also given basic education in English, computers, management, accounting and bookkeeping. Once they complete their 9-month training program and 3-month project work, girls are encouraged to open their own businesses and continue to develop their skills in their region

Here is Anita again with her fellow students

Anita is a young Kashmiri widow with 3 dependent children. « I never thought this would happen in my life », said she, talking about the impact that the SAF scholarship and training program has had on her life. « I have so much more confidence now. My life has become just like a rainbow

And to end on an optimistic note: The SAF-SOS Friendship Camp at Malpotha, Sri Lanka, set the tone of SAF and SOS-Kinderdorf Villages cooperation in the fields of organic agriculture and environmental protection. This camp represented an opportunity to bring together orphan children from the SAARC region so they could exchange their customs and culture and at the same time learn a skill in organic farming and environment. The success of the grassroot camp was replicated in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India


And above all UNESCO for allowing us to hold this forum and in doing so giving our NGOs a visibility while inviting us all to share its utmost aim : the fight against poverty and for peace and security through education, science and culture


Download Programme : Forum NGO Women - Programme.pdf