Dr. Sakia Haque, Bangladesh

What is your organization?

The name of my organisation is Travelettes of Bangladesh . Our motto is to empower women through travelling.

We work to help the women who want to travel but cannot travel due to social stigmas or barriers. We also have a project "নারীর চোখে বাংলাদেশ/Bangladesh through women's eye" where we talk about breaking social taboos related to menstruation, early marriage and teach girls basics of self defence.In this project we also educate girls about Health, Hygiene and Environment,Liberation War of Bangladesh and tourism of Bangladesh.

What inspired you to start your organization?

5 years back it was very much difficult for a girl or woman to travel around the country. Society did not allow women to travel without a male companion. And you cannot travel with a male if you are not married. So, we wanted to create a platform where women and girls of any age can join, exercise their freedom and travel together ensuring their safety. And this unity helped in getting permission from families.

When we actually started travelling to different places we saw a lot of women suffering due to their lack of knowledge which inspired us to start different women empowerment projects.

What challenges have you faced?

The first challenge was to overcome the barriers of our society. The male dominating society couldn’t accept that there can be such an organisation of women. At the very early stage, it was very hard to make everyone understand that Women doesn’t need any men to travel or it’s a right of a woman to travel if she wants.

There were also a lot of challenges such as social norms, safety issue, Bullying,eve-teasing, challenges on our trip etc.

What resources have helped you get through some of those challenges? What have been some of your best resources in general?

Mostly the love, satisfaction and good feedback of the women who travelled with us were the best resources we had. We call it resources because without them it was impossible to step ahead. It was them who constantly helped us in every stage to overcome the barriers and constantly asking us not to stop the work. They used to say that they've tasted the flavour of freedom of travelling freely and they want all the other women of the country to feel the same.

Another important resource was the good people or manpower. The amazing volunteers of the organisation kept doing the hard work to reach our goal.

What advice do you have for young people looking to make an impact?

Never Stop. Never stop until you reach the goal. There will be a lot of barriers. People will talk,but when you'll be at the peak of your achievement of creating an impact, you won't hear anything except thousand claps.