‘Imbuing women with dignity best way for empowerment’

Womenfolk should be imbued with self-respect, dignity and confidence for accelerating the campaign of women empowerment across the society. “When a woman is educated through acquiring knowledge in different disciplines, she will be empowered…. so education and healthcare facilities are the tool for their empowerment,” Runa Khan, founder and executive director of Friendship, a non-government organization, shared her experiences in an exclusive interview with BSS marking the International Women’s Day.

She said for ensuring their dignified life, they (women) must achieve ways of most essential components such as knowledge, skills and finding ways to survive better in the society.

Runa Khan said women community particularly in remote areas is facing tremendous obstacles in every sphere of the society. She said two stigmas — religious and social — are largely responsible for getting fewer opportunities from society. Explaining these stigmas, the development campaigner said deprivation starts for a girl child from family level first and then she faces discrimination at every level of society. Runa Khan observed women in hard- to-reach areas are not getting equal facilities like their male counterparts, which creates great barrier for their advancement.

Narrating the journey of her development organization, she said, “Friendship sailed into the char of the Jamuna river in 2002 with its first floating hospital… at that time, everyone discouraged me saying it is impossible to run a hospital in such remote areas. As a woman, initially, I heard everything was impossible whenever my organization had taken any initiative.” “But almost 20 years later I have proved everything is possible.”

This is a very common perception about women in the male-dominated society that women cannot, the Friendship founder said in most case, female community is forced to accept negative social structure of the society created by male community. Time has come to break this negative social structure through providing equal opportunities to womenfolk, she added.

Runa Khan said, “If we really want to change fate of the people living in remote areas, we have to empower community people giving highest importance to women advancement.”

Very common trend of development organizations of Bangladesh is project based work; she said adding friendship is totally an exception from this general trend of work. “We work with community people… we have made these people skilled workforce through providing necessary training.”

Besides, nurturing women leaders in the unaddressed communities where Friendship works, the organization is led by women at every level, said Runa Khan.

Three of its international entities around the world are chaired by women.Friendship Belgium is led by Her Royal Highness Princess Esmeralda de Rethy, Friendship France led by William Lebedel, Friendship Luxembourg led by Marc Elvinger, Friendship Netherlands led by Dorothee ter Kulve and Friendship UK led by Kenneth Hay. Friendship International is co-chaired by Runa Khan.