Social justice is a result of complex interplay of several political, institutional, cultural ethos, and socio-economic factors. Therefore, it is imperative to remove the hindrances that create problems in the achievement of social justice and subject people to social injustice. True to its mission of establishing a socially just system and society, SPO has initiated a Social Justice Programme. The programme intends to establish and strengthen community-rooted mechanisms in order to secure the well being of people, irrespective of caste, creed, colour or sex, by improving their quality of life. The programme’s aim is to support mechanisms largely in the public sector, and those devised by civil society in the areas of basic education, primary healthcare, livelihood support to women and relief and rehabilitation after natural disasters in areas where SPO works.
The programme focuses on three major areas namely improving public services, women rights and disaster preparedness. Since majority of low-income communities rely on public services, they bear the brunt of deterioration in public service. SPO has taken measures to ameliorate public services in education and health sector by introducing citizens monitoring. Under this output monitoring committees will be mobilized in order to “bring government closer to the people”.
In the activities related to women rights different dimensions of women livelihood, empowerment and development are covered. This component deals with different inter-related strategies: recognizing women’s right to resources and their livelihood and literacy strategies; the challenge of democratic governance and provision of institutional systems to protect women from violence and discrimination.
The component of Disaster Preparedness provides trainings and assists national disaster management authority in developing policies and procedures and planning preparedness. These activities aim at ensuring timely disaster preparation and effective emergency response mechanism at the community, district and national level.
SPO strives to empower marginalized communities through its activities and interventions across Pakistan. To appreciate the struggle of women, men and communities in bringing about change in their lives and communities, SPO regularly compiles and publishes their stories in the shape of case studies. These stories do not represent an overall view of the situation but they definitely represent snippets of the bigger picture
