From housewife to health worker: touching other lives and changing my own

S haheen Hussain, the 6th of 7 children raised in an unprivileged home in a village of Punjab, Pakistan, married when she was 18 and played the traditional role of housewife and caregiver to her children, but she felt unfulfilled on a personal level. Two years ago, she became a field-based health educator with the ‘‘Suraj’’ (sun) social franchise of private reproductive health care providers, established by Marie Stopes Society in 3 provinces of Pakistan. Her story below, transcribed and translated from an interview, is a testimony of how this program not only touches the lives of the women who receive the reproductive health services but also of the health educators themselves.