Shirkat Gah Women Resource Centre (WRC)

Section 1: Basic Information

Shirkat Gah is a foreign donor-funded organization that has been working in Pakistan since 1975. It has its head office in Lahore and field offices in Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar. In addition to these cities, the organization is conducting its activities in Vehari, Okara, Hyderabad, Jamshoro, Shaheed Benazir Abad, Larkana, Mardan Swat and Jafarabad. The organization is primarily working for the awareness and rights of women and children and has recently included the transgender community in its target audience. Shirkat Gah conducts awareness sessions for its targeted communities in collaboration with Community-Based Organizations (CBOs). The program team of the organization provides training and funding to the CBOs to enable them for conducting awareness sessions. The program team then monitors and evaluates these sessions. In addition to these awareness campaigns, the organization helps in policy making by raising awareness regarding the issues faced by women, children, and now transgender communities. They bring the data collected through their case studies to policy-making discussions and thereby help in legislation on these issues. Shirkat Gah played an active role in the legislation of “Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act, 2010”. In addition, the organization has been involved in awareness sessions followed by CNIC and Voter registration of (particularly) women in remote areas of Pakistan.

Section 2: Structure of the Organization

The departments in Shirkat Gah fall under two categories of ‘Operations’ and ‘Program’. Both ‘Admin’ and ‘Human Resources’ departments fall under Operations and are one-person departments. The Admin and Human resource managers are allowed to hire assistants on a contract basis depending on the nature and load of their work. The ‘Program’ department has program officers of different hierarchies. The following table represents the departments and employees in their respective departments.

Program	Operations
Senior Program officers	Human Resource Manager/Officer
Program officers	Admin Manager/Officer
Assistant program officers

Section 3: Hiring Mechanism

Internship: The organization offers summer internships to the students who approach them and hires interns on a need basis. There is no stipend for the interns who approach the organization themselves. These internships are six to eight weeks long and interns are generally required to help report and organize the data collected from the field research.

If the organization needs additional assistance with some project they advertise the need for interns on their social media platforms. The interns may be hired for four to six months long internships and are required to provide complete assistance to the officer they are assigned with. The stipend for these interns ranges between 15,000 to 20,000 PKR per month.

Program Officer: The hiring of program officers is done on a need basis only. The vacancies are advertised through social media platforms. Anyone with a bachelor's degree can apply for these positions, however, some positions might have the requirement of experience. The candidates are shortlisted based on their CVs and are required to take a written test. Those who clear the test are required to appear for an interview and the final selection is made based on this interview. The hiring can be for both permanent and contract-based positions. Almost 30% of the current permanent employees at Shirkat Gah were initially hired on a contract basis and were then promoted to permanent positions based on their performance. The salary range of the program officers is as follows.

Designation	Minimum Salary in PKR (Per month)	Maximum Salary in PKR (Per month)
Senior Program officers	50-55,000	70-75,000
Program officers		45,000
Assistant Program officers	35,000	40,000

In addition to salaries, the employees are eligible for annual performance-based appraisals. These appraisals can range from 7% to 20% increments based on the performance of the officer. The employees also receive occasional performance-based bonuses if there is sufficient funding available. A program officer is also eligible for a promotion after completing a year at the organization. The decision about the promotion is made at the time of the annual appraisal after assessment from reporting officer and the director of the program officer. In addition to the financial compensation, the employees receive benefits such as Health insurance, Life insurance, EOBI and Social security.