Faisalabad: April 20, 2010. (By Shazia George) On 15th April 2010, AWAM (Association of Women for Awareness and Motivation) organized a public forum titled “Women Empowerment: Still a Dream” in collaboration with ASDP (Agency for Sustainable Development Pakistan). The main objective of this activity was to sensitize the community about their fundamental rights and to analyze the outputs of the recent conducted activities in the area. 160 male and female participants joined the event while some of them shared their personal experiences and success stories with their respective community during the public forum held at Gillali Pur in Faisalabad. The speakers included; Naseem Anthony (Executive Secretary-AWAM), Amina Zaman (Director-ASDP), Shazia George (Coordinator-AWAM), Nazia Sardar, Zafar Iqbal, Amna Bano, Shazia Munawar and Dr. Abdul Rehman. The speakers said, “Customs like honor killing and vanni have nothing to do with religion and ethics, so such heinous customary practices should be removed from the society, because women are still deprived of basic rights such as; right to free marriage, right to life, right to education and right to free movement, by the use of such traditions in the name of culture and religion”. They said, “Democracy cannot prevail in the country unless all the biases based on gender and religion are eliminated”. “Due to patriarchal system, it is the prime responsibility of male members being heads of the families to play their part for giving equal rights to women in all phases of life, for their empowerment”, they added. They said, “Government should launch schemes and programs which specifically give financial benefits to the women for making them economically strong, because most of the violence cases occur due to economic problems