‘I can leave a question mark with them. They should question things’
Yusra Hussain is the founder of Agahee Pakistan, a grassroots organization providing social enterprise services to marginalized communities, especially women and young people. She is dedicated to empowering other women and raising their awareness about sexual and reproductive health and rights.
“It has been an interesting journey for me,” Yusra says.
After her university studies, she got married in 2015 but quickly found out she was in an abusive relationship.
“Within a week of my relationship,” she says “there were things happening that I could see were not right.”
Yusra made excuses and gave her husband the benefit of doubt again and again, hoping the cycle of violence would end.
“Violence is not always physical,” she says. “I was traumatized emotionally and abused verbally and financially. It wore me down and it took years for me to come out of the trauma.”
“Violence is not always physical. I was traumatized emotionally and abused verbally and financially. It wore me down and it took years for me to come out of the trauma.”
She says domestic violence is normalized in Pakistan and needs to be addressed, but when she was suffering abuse she says finding help was not easy.
“I was looking out for support,” she says. “I wanted to reach out to people who could help me or hear me out or just give me, you know, suggestions on what to do next because nothing made sense to me at that time.”
Not only was she living with violence in her home, but the culture in Pakistan makes it difficult for women to report violence.
“There were many organizations worldwide dealing with domestic violence,” she says. “Whenever I texted or emailed them they told me that they cannot help me because they are not in Pakistan and so they should try and reach out to a local organization.”
Despite her search for help, Yusra was not able to find protection services in her community.
“I was found unconscious in my office one day.”
“I was not happy and it kept on happening,” she says. “I was found unconscious in my office one day. My ex's family forbade me to eat anything the day before so I was functioning on no food and constant abuse that resulted in a minor mental breakdown.”
Yusra never saw her husband again. She returned to her father’s home and began a new life, one devoted to ending violence against women in Pakistan.
“There’s a social stigma about violence,” she says. “We were all seeing it, but nobody was doing anything about it. But then it happened to me.”
Yusra realized that she could be part of opening the conversation about violence and help build a network of support for women and girls who were experiencing violence.
“I've always been thinking about doing something and when it clicked I thought I should make an organization where I do something for women.”
“I've always been thinking about doing something and when it clicked I thought I should make an organization where I do something for women.”
Yusra put together a proposal on how to conduct a training session on awareness about abuse, harassment and get out of it. Yusra says her approach was more inclusive as It was aimed at both girls and boys.
“Boys need to know how to actually dismantle the patriarchal society and how it is going to benefit them,” she explains.
Yusra set up an organization called Agahee, which means awareness in Urdu. It's also at that it became an acronym Aware Girls about Abuse, Harassment & Equal Empowerment.
“Boys need to know how to actually dismantle the patriarchal society and how it is going to benefit them.”
Yusra prepared her sessions and made plans with her former high school to begin her work as an advocate. Instead of a warm welcome, Yusra says the principal tried to brush her off despite the scheduled lessons, and then limited her time to just 30 minutes to talk with the students.
“When I was sitting with the girls and when I started talking I could see I could see the yearning in their eyes,” Yusra says. “They wanted to know more.”
Yusra gave the girls information about how to get help and find people to talk to.
“They wanted to talk more about street harassment,” she says. “They wanted to talk more about harassment in their communities and all the things that they go through within their own houses.”
Yusra says the girls were relieved that someone was speaking with them about social issues instead of purely academic subjects.
“They wanted to talk more about harassment in their communities and all the things that they go through within their own houses.”
“I knew that I have more of them because when I looked at those girls, I could just tell and by the time I got home there were dozens up late for messages on my Instagram account.”
Since that day Yusra and her sister teamed up to make Agahee a catalyst for girls in Pakistan to talk openly about what they are going through and how to change it.
“When I go to a school or university or anywhere in the community, I talk to young girls and then they go back to their homes and question things in their home after the training. This should happen because this is how we'll make a change.”
But Yusra says change doesn’t always happen in a straight line and she knows that girls don’t often get the comforting responses they’d hoped for when they raise the issue of gender-based violence.
“They received responses, ‘What are they teaching you in this school? What sort of questions are you asking me? I will talk to the headmistress in your school. I will talk to a teacher! What are they doing to our girls?”
Yusra says this rigid resistance to new ideas is deeply ingrained in the older generation. “I'm targeting young people because I can mould their minds.”
“I'm targeting young people because I can mould their minds.”
Yusra juggles dozens of conversations and cases through her online chats. She’s chatting with a girl whose family keeps her in a room after school and they just want to marry her off. Yusra says the family doesn’t care if they marry her off into an abusive or violent marriage.
“This is what patriarchy looks like in our society and it is shameful.”
“This is what patriarchy looks like in our society and it is shameful.”
Yusra says that in each session, Agahee is planting seeds that will take time to reach fruition.
“I know, it's not going to be a very abrupt process,” she says. “It's going to take years and years and I may not even live to see the change.”
Yusra is motivated by the idea that she leaves the girls to begin their own journey of asking questions.
“At least there should be a question,” she says. “In some I can leave a question mark with them. They should question things.”
Yusra and her sister started doing more awareness sessions with students and started getting the message out. They host ‘open mics’ where people can share monologues about their experiences as survivors, allies and advocates.
“We create a safe space for them where they can talk,” she says. “Nobody judges anyone and we will just talk. There are housewives who are going through stuff. They cannot talk to their immediate family.”
“We create a safe space for them where they can talk.”
After years of listening and sharing, Yusra has distilled some of her learning into structured lesson plans on gender-based violence that can be integrated into the national education curriculum. She says the project is proceeding but getting approvals takes time.
In the meantime, she tries to keep the sessions small, just groups of 10 to 16 so the girls feel comfortable. She says at this rate the progress is slow.
“It's very challenging every time because there are so many schools. There are so many people who still need to know more about it.”
As Yusra continues to advocate for change, she’s also experienced strong resistance and even menacing threats.
“I have received a call from someone that I know who said that, I know this person and they want you to stop doing what you are doing.”
She now takes these threats in her stride as part of being an activist pushing against a hostile patriarchal power structure.
“How is it going to stop me?” she says. “But I can't really just stop doing what has become the ambition of My Life.”
“How is it going to stop me?” she says. “But I can't really just stop doing what has become the ambition of My Life.”
While Yusra sees progress in the communities where she engages young people, she says there is so much more to do in the rural areas.
“In small villages nobody speaks up,”Yusra says. “Women and girls get raped and even their mothers say ‘Just keep quiet and that's okay. It's fine, just go out and don’t tell anybody that you got raped. There's so many things that are still not reported.
Yusra has had to suspend the in-person sessions during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s allowed her to focus on refinancing new materials and maintaining her exchanges with hundreds of women across the country. .
“I have received messages from women saying that my story has inspired them to make a decision for themselves. And now they have taken steps to get out of an abusive relationship”
“Sometimes it makes me happy that I made a decision to share my story with the world because I know it has helped many people to make their decision,” she adds.
“Sometimes it makes me happy that I made a decision to share my story with the world because I know it has helped many people to make their decision.”
“And it really keeps me going as the fact that in a span of just four or five years I've seen people in Pakistan talking about sexual and reproductive health . I've seen women in Peshawar and Karachi and the remotest area coming out to the streets and chanting and protesting about their rights.”
Yusra attended the ICPD25 summit in Nairobi last year. She says she was able to learn from some of the world's most inspiring activists for gender equality who were at the event.
She and her sister have organized awareness sessions and multiple opportunities to enable women to speak up throughout Pakistan. They are committed to sharing experiences with peers by publishing articles on issues related to gender and patriarchal oppression. Yusra has been recognized for her contributions and she received the SATHA Innovation Award in 2018.
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