KARACHI: Dressed in a vibrant pink embroidered dress with traditional patterns depicting the Sindhi culture, Ponam Shaam Lal proudly displays her handcrafted cushions to visitors at an upscale mall in Karachi. Had it not been for Sindh’s rural artisan programs, Lal, in her late 30s, would have been bereft of skill, and the means to earn her bread and butter.
Lal’s creations were among the 5,800 handicrafts showcased at a four-day exhibition launched by the Sindh Rural Support Organization (SRSO), a not-for-profit organization, in Karachi’s Ocean Mall on Thursday. The event, a collaboration with the Sindh government, featured 3,545 rural woman artisans displaying products ranging from traditional shawls to embroidered accessories.
The SRSO has trained thousands of rural women in different trades from some of the most under-developed regions of Sindh such as Jacobabad, Kandhkot-Kashmore, Shikarpur, Ghotki, Qambar-Shahdadkot and Badin districts in the last 16 years.
Lal, who rarely ventured beyond her remote village near Rohri up until a few years ago, is one of those thousands of artisans at the Karachi event, which aims to help these women sell to high-end customers in Pakistan’s urban cities.
“Before, we never went out; we didn’t know the outside world. Only my husband would earn. We would sit idle, wondering how to make ends meet or pay for our children’s education,” Lal told Arab News, as she showed her handicrafts to a customer.
“We were poor, but when we started doing this work, took on orders, and worked hard, our circumstances improved.”
Lal says the crochet and embroidery work she learned due to the SRSO’s training program has helped her send her children to school, and life is “finally stable.”
Shahida Baloch, an artisan and trainer from Sindh’s Sukkur city, learned embroidery from her mother and grandmother, but she had little formal education or access to markets where she could sell her products.
“I am a rural woman from the village,” Baloch, a mother of seven, told Arab News.
“We learned embroidery and sewing at home from our grandmothers, without attending any institute or training center.”
But things changed for Baloch, when the SRSO reached her village almost a decade ago. She says the organization provided her recognition for her embroidery and sewing skills by showcasing her work at exhibitions across the country.
As one of the few trainers at the SRSO, Baloch now guides woman artists on how to transform traditional craft into marketable products. 
“I trained women to make cushions, bags, and pouches from the same art. We also worked on color combinations, blending traditional Sindhi colors — blue, yellow, red, green, all natural colors — with modern preferences. This way, the color became more appealing to urban customers,” she said.
“Similarly, we taught them to create buttons as a supplementary product. For instance, if no one buys large, embroidered fabrics worth fifty thousand or a hundred thousand rupees, they might buy a few buttons to embellish their shirts.”
SRSO CEO Muhammad Dittal Kalhoro said the organization has trained over 6,000 women in Sindh’s poorest areas through 316 Business Development Groups.
“Our aim is to connect these women with high-end markets and ensure better incomes,” he said.
Sindh government spokesperson Sadia Javed said the SRSO, part of a larger poverty-reduction initiative, provides loans and support to woman artisans, and with a 98 percent repayment rate, it has proven highly effective.
“Earlier, this program was limited to a few districts,” Javed said. “Now, it has expanded to urban slums in Karachi and Sukkur.”
For women like Lal and Baloch, the SRSO has brought more than financial stability.
It has brought them dignity and hope.
“I am extremely grateful to Allah for making the SRSO the means through which I was empowered,” said Baloch, who could not study beyond the fifth grade, but has managed to send two of her daughters to university.
“Today, I am successful, and so are my children.”

QUETTA: Rescue teams in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province have retrieved four bodies from a coal mine following a methane gas explosion a day earlier in the Sanjdi coal field, about 40 kilometers from Quetta, which left a dozen miners trapped inside the mine.
According to a senior official of the provincial mining department overseeing the rescue work, the search for the other miners is still ongoing, though he maintained the chances of finding anyone alive were almost negligible.
Rescue teams from the mining department and the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) have been working for the last 19 hours with heavy machinery.
“We have recovered four bodies after nearly 24 hours of the incident,” Abdul Ghani, Chief Inspector Mines Balochistan, told Arab News. “The workers were digging coal 4,000 feet inside the mine, and we have recovered the bodies at 3,000 feet. The search for other workers is still underway.”
Responding to a question, he said the entire mine had caved in due to the intensity of the explosion.
“An excavator from Quetta reached the site at midnight, and we succeeded in opening the mouth of the mine this morning,” he said.
“The mining department will conduct a thorough investigation to assess what kind of safety measures were put in place by the private mine owners,” he added.
Many coal mines in the province are operated by private companies, often under lease agreements with the government.
Ghani said that 11 of the miners were from Shangla, a town in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, while one was a resident of Balochistan.
Mines in Balochistan are known for hazardous working conditions and poor safety standards, where deadly incidents are not uncommon.
According to the provincial mining department, 82 coal miners working on different projects were killed in Balochistan last year in 46 reported mining accidents.