ADORN is lucky to have recruited the skills of Karachi-based artisan, Shazia. Shazia* is a single mother of seven children ranging in age from 14 years to seven years. Married at the age of 14, she has suffered years of domestic abuse at the hands of a husband. Shazia's husband was a heavy drug and alcohol user, a perpetual womanizer and provided little to the household income.

Having lost any belief in her families' security, Shazia accepted divorce. The reality of divorce within economically challenged communities of Pakistani society is often very brutal. Shazia has since been struggling to provide for the basic needs for herself and her children.

Not literate herself, Shazia makes paper bags for flour mills to earn her living and has a son who sets up a stall in the weekly bazaar. Knowing the importance of education, she has found someone to fund her younger children's schooling but has already arranged the marriage of her eldest daughter, again at a very young age. Shazia's decision to do this is to protect her daughter from her financial fragility and struggle was behind the motivation to have her daughter married. The cycle of poverty is very hard for families to escape from, in these circumstances. Her only aspiration is that her children have a better life than she has.

As a supplement to her meager family income, Shazia stitches bedspreads and cushions for Adorn. Employment opportunities are scarce for a woman with five dependent children who is living without a male breadwinner. She is constantly looking for additional projects that she can complete at home.

A skilled artisan, Shazia excels in quilt-making, machine and hand embroidery as well as stitching, she shows attention to detail, enthusiasm and skill whilst preserving cottage industry crafts from pre-partition Pakistan that are at threat of being lost forever.

*Name changed to protect privacy