Our Work

The Aotearoa Ethnic Communities Trust (AECT) is a non-profit organization. We are working in national and international partnership to promote women empowerment and community development by providing resources and education to become self-supporting.

AECT has been helping poor and marginalized communities in Pakistan via workshops, projects, and training programs to help them attain their rights and future aspirations

The Aotearoa Ethnic Communities Trust has successfully built platforms in rural and remote areas of Pakistan, to help marginalized and economically disadvantaged communities and women to become self-sustaining. The name of this project is called the Fire Community Development and Women Empowerment Project (FIRE).

The women empowerment project is established in Pakistani village named Youngsonabad which is located 2-hour drive from the main city Lahore.

Pakistan has a rich cultural heritage. Pakistani people can be very skilled in making handicrafts item (e.g. clothing, jewelry, hand-knitted scarves, embroidered goods, and shoes).  FIRE is making use of existing skills and resources working alongside the communities and women of poverty-stricken and remote villages of Pakistan. FIRE is training some village women to take leadership roles in their lives, develop financial sustainability and learn about micro business management. FIRE is also training the village women basic sewing skills, embroidery, knitting, relationship building, and business skills to establish their own networks within the community and grow their business skills and experience. FIRE is supporting the women to financially sustain themselves and their families.

The village women come from disadvantaged backgrounds and do not share same privileges and opportunities like us. The women from the village come from very poor families and do not have the opportunity to go to school or start a business. These women eventually get married and most of them become housewives and are responsible for looking after large family units. The males in the household are responsible to construct livelihood through participation in labor market or building farms and spend long hours outside home. These women face challenges and barriers like access to social support, employment, education and are dependent on their husbands for financial support. This can make them vulnerable and can lead to FV and all kids of domestic violence. Sharing their story about abuse or FV is not considered culturally appropriate in the village community so most of women hide their wounds and live on with their lives. This cycle of poverty and abuse ultimately affects their whole families, cultures and generations. FIRE connects with these women and helps them to engage, dream big and offer them support in the form of training, micro-business management, and social support. This allows the women to build trust and open up about their challenges and share their problems and get support. FIRE aims to address complex and overlapping sources of rural poverty by building initiatives to increase wealth, self-sufficiency, inclusion and engagement. FIRE is working alongside the women to empower them and also trains them to become mentors.

We are also working towards partnering with international and national communities to promote gender equality in marginalized and disadvantaged communities.      

FIRE is working towards creating partnership and collaboration with the local and overseas NGOs, government and non-government agencies, and businesses to improve the effectiveness of the project.

Please go to our online store to purchase the products made by the village women to support our project. You can sponsor a training center by going to the sponsor page. Your donation will go towards covering the cost of the project and will help us to overcome the challenges related to reduced staffing, limited resources, equipment and related costs.