Expanding their horizons

The King Abdul Aziz Women's Charity Committee in Buraida is one of the most successful women's groups in Saudi.

The King Abdul Aziz Women's Charity Committee recently partnered with local health officials in a breast cancer awareness programme.

BURAIDA, SAUDI ARABIA // Four years ago, Lolwa al Bakheet decided to look into a women's group that she had heard was giving start-up business loans to women on low incomes. On her first visit to the King Abdul Aziz Women's Charity Committee, Mrs Bakheet recalled, she was "a bit disoriented" because she is not someone who usually takes out a loan. But before long, the illiterate mother of five had a 3,000 riyal (Dh2,938) loan to open a snack cart, selling sweets and other sundries from her home in a poor section of Buraida.

Mrs Bakheet repaid the loan and took out another one for 8,000 riyals, which she used to buy a share in a new women-owned company that sets places and serves food at fancy parties. Her once-meagre income has vastly improved, she said. She now makes in a day what once took weeks to earn. The returns have not just been financial. "I am more emotionally stable now" and "happier", said Mrs Bakheet, 36.

"I pay my bills on time and by myself. That is one of the most liberating feelings." Mrs Bakheet's story vividly illustrates why the King Abdul Aziz Women's Charity Committee in Buraida, capital of Al Qassim province, is one of the most successful grass-roots women's groups in the kingdom. Supported by a progressive-minded princess, the group is improving the lives of ordinary women, raising their self-confidence and expanding their horizons. And it is doing so in a region regarded as a bastion of Islamic conservatism.

Behind the beige stone walls of the charity's headquarters, the women run a well-managed operation that also offers courses in computers, Saudi handicrafts and financial management. It offers rent subsidies to widows, divorcees and wives of imprisoned men, and it intervenes to help victims of domestic abuse. Most recently, the charity has partnered with local health officials in a new breast cancer awareness programme. More than a dozen female volunteers from the charity are giving educational workshops to women all over the province on the need for early detection of lumps through regular mammograms and self-examinations.

None of these activities is revolutionary. It is where they are happening that makes them notable. A little more than 300km northwest of Riyadh, Buraida is the heartland of Saudi Arabia's religious and political conservatism. At times, it has openly defied the ruling royal family. In 1963, just six years after Dwight D Eisenhower, the US president from Jan 1953 to Jan 1961, sent in federal troops to forcibly desegregate schools in Arkansas, King Faisal ordered the National Guard to Buraida to protect the first private girls' school from religious conservatives opposed to educating women.

More recently, clerics in Buraida were at the forefront of Islamist opposition to the government. Change is coming to the flat, tan-hued expanse of wide boulevards and low-rise office buildings interspersed with spindly minarets. The city's first international hotel, the Movenpick, arrived a little more than a year ago. But it remains more conservative than other parts of Saudi Arabia when it comes to women. The full face veil - the niqab - is required attire and restrictions on women participating in public life are strictly observed.

Buraida women have opted to work around these obstacles. Neither revolutionaries, nor liberals, they are not agitating for the right to drive or fling off their niqabs. Far more important, they said, is the right to work outside the home, access to good health care and opportunities for self-improvement. Underneath their required public "uniform" of abaya and niqab they wear frilly blouses, fashionable jackets, lots of make-up and spangly earrings. Mobile phones are never more than an arm's reach away. A favourite television programme, they said, is The Oprah Winfrey Show.

"We want people to know that we are progressive people here in Buraida, that we are not all terrorists," said Nawal Abdullah al Egagi, a mother of five and head of a private school. "We women hold down jobs and then do volunteer work." The King Abdul Aziz Women's Charity Committee is the main organisational focus of the women's activities in Buraida and other parts of the province. A major catalyst for its strong growth in recent years has been Princess Noura bint Mohammed Al Saoud, wife of Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Abdul Aziz, the Al Qassim governor. The princess has been the charity's strongest backer, providing both financial and moral support.

The charity's roots, however, go back 28 years, according to Al Jawhara M al Wabili, a moon-faced woman with a husky voice who is constantly on her phone and chairs the charity's board. Mrs Wabili said she began volunteering at the charity 22 years ago when still a teenager. On a recent day, Mrs Wabili was seated in her office beneath photos of the omnipresent Saudi triumvirate - the founding father King Abdul Aziz bin Saud, King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan. So many women are active in the charity's network of volunteers, she said, "because they like seeing results".

A charity brochure states that its volunteers are motivated by four values: "willpower, patriotism, insistence and leadership". Once inside the charity's headquarters, Mrs Wabili and most of the other women ditch their abayas, scarves and veils. Since this is an area forbidden to men, they do not have to worry about being seen by an unrelated male. In the centre of the charity's headquarters, a circular courtyard is lit up by sunlight streaming through an opaque, domed roof. Pillars are designed to look like tree trunks and the walls are hung with idyllic landscapes of blue sky and wide rivers. In this courtyard, many of the charity's low-income clients sell embroidered wares made with the sewing skills they acquired at the organisation.

Off this central area, like spokes on a wheel, are the organisation's offices, including those of the finance and "donor request" committees. The charity receives financial support from the government, businessmen and royal family members. "They give us money because they know we work hard," said Mrs Wabili, a top aide to Princess Noura. Mariam Mogren al Noman, 43, sat before the desk of a staffer answering questions. She wore a white T-shirt under her abaya. Her hands were dyed with henna and her nails aflame with bright orange polish. A widow with five children, the charity helps Mrs Noman to pay the rent.

"They give me a salary every month to help me and help my children," she said. Wasan Hijazi oversees the charity's diversified efforts to lift low-income women out of poverty by teaching them marketable skills. The micro-loan programme currently has 180 outstanding loans ranging between 3,000 and 15,000 riyals, offered at a zero interest rate. All are being repaid, Mrs Hijazi said. Women have started up businesses in tailoring, poultry, groceries and hairdressing. One opened a mobile phone shop. "Our main condition is [that she] runs her business by herself," Mrs Hijazi said. "Not to give it to her husband, her brother, or her father."

Charity representatives visit each business venture twice a month to check on how it is doing, she said. They also give borrowers courses in marketing, public relations and financial management. "These things are not provided by banks nor by anybody else," Mrs Hijazi said. Mrs Bakheet said that some women who heard her story were so inspired that they took out loans themselves. As for her husband, who is retired, Mrs Bakheet said that he not only "allows" her work but "in fact, supports it". Mrs Hijazi said the charity has also organised mutual lending groups of self-employed women who give loans to each other, allowing them to get around common obstacles they face at banks.

"The lady guarantees herself with no need for a man guarantor," Mrs Hijazi said. "This is easier because we know that our women sometimes can't convince her husband to take a loan unless she pays him, or he shares in the business." The charity, which is putting up a new building next door on land donated by the government, is also planning to expand its counselling programme for victims of domestic violence. And it recently began an urban development programme for rundown neighbourhoods, some of which do not have electricity. Once charity workers find residents of these areas "who have a good reputation and know what their area needs", Mrs Hijazi said, they show them how to organise to receive improvements.

Between 2,500 to 3,000 women graduate from the charity's training centre each year. Students pay for their evening courses, which include computer training, interior design, accounting and at long last - photography. "Now, it's allowed," Mrs Hijazi said. "Before, we were not able to advertise the photography course." After the charity located a fatwa saying that it is Islamically permissible to be trained in photography, local education officials relented and approved the course.

"We were very patient," said Mrs Hijazi, noting that the approval had taken 18 months. It is still not smooth sailing in other areas. At the moment, the charity is seeking official approval of its interior design diploma. And it is has been denied permission by officials to use a new, updated curriculum designed by Microsoft in its computer training course. According to Mrs Hijazi, the officials said the charity does not have the status nor right to sign the necessary agreements with Microsoft.

Could it be that permission is not forthcoming because the computer students are all women? Mrs Hijazi just smiled. @Email:[e-mail] In part two tomorrow, Caryle Murphy sits down for an interview with Princess Noura bint Mohammed Al Saud, the progressive princess whose support allows the organisation to survive - and thrive.