STORY 1: The early days of ARROW
— Rashidah Abdullah

When Rita and I conceptualised ARROW, we had planned to focus not just on health but on a number of other issues, including media and even women's economic empowerment. It was not until 1993, after the formation of ARROW that we decided to focus on women's health. We reconceptualised ARROW's role and direction after we engaged with feminists globally around the preparation of the Cairo and Beijing programmes of action documents. We rewrote our project proposal cum strategic plan to focus more specifically on women's health and submitted it in March 1993.

Our work on the health resource book for the Asia Pacific Development Centre Gender and Development (APDC-GAD) Programme put us in touch with a range of creative resources that were unpublished, yet used to spark social action. We thought that such resources could be shared widely and would make a difference to many activists in the women's movement. I recall us being so inspired reading Sundari Ravindran's research on maternal mortality. It was so informative, caring and passionate about women's health. It immediately had the effect of deepening our understanding and commitment to the issue of reducing maternal mortality.

This combination of strategy and activist experience was what we were looking for to complement the early dual strategy of ARROW—information resources and research. We needed facts and data to convince policy makers that SRHR issues should be addressed urgently. This had to be communicated in a creative and motivating way—turned into well-written messages and stories to convince people and inspired them to use these as resources for action. We were familiar with this kind of style through the resources of the health resource book we had worked on, and also in the writing of Noeleen Heyzer who headed the APDC GAD Programme. Noeleen always wrote with a mixture of facts, analysis and emotion, which has been personally very inspiring. These were the early roots of how we conceptualised information for change and advocacy.

I recall a mix of excitement and tension in the office during the first few years of ARROW. We had lots to do and the Sida money for the first proposal came in at the end of 1993. There were only four staff members at the time, so Rita and I also did the programme work, besides being Co-Directors. The Programme Advisory Committee gave us such a boost in 1994. These were a group of practical and visionary women who believed in our vision. We also were engaged in projects with the Boston Women's Health Book Collective and the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group (IRRRAG) team so we felt firmly part of the global women's movement, even if we were just a tiny organisation at the time.

We linked up with feminists in so many different ways and these women contributed greatly to the development of ARROW's programmatic direction. Attending the ICPD in Cairo in 1994 was a major event because we got to see national level feminists who were doing fantastic work on reproductive health in action. We also organised a workshop at the NGO Forum in Cairo on indicators in Reproductive Health with Centre for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and CHANGE; USA, which was a cutting-edge issue then. Through this event, we met many wonderful women and established ourselves as an organisation capable of conducting monitoring and developing indicators.

One of the lessons we learned was that if an organisation's strategic plan clearly outlines context, players, opportunities and the money needed for implementation, then the rest is straight sailing. Our first proposal was focused more on information and documentation centre work, but there was limited interest from funders for this. Once we added the advocacy and change element into the second proposal, there was much more interest from funders to support our work. We learned that it was good to be bold and ambitious and go for the longer-term objectives set instead of being overly cautious.

I am lucky to have had a partner to start ARROW with and to do this work together. Rita and I were good friends since 1975. Despite the challenges in being both friends and co-directors, I am certain that it was because there were two of us at the start that it led to a stronger ARROW.

 

STORY 2: Programme Advisory Committee: The early years
— Di Surgey

I first met Rashidah at the 1990 International Women's Health Meeting (IWHM) in Manila, having corresponded with her some years earlier about women's health resources I had produced in Melbourne, Australia, in the 1980s. While there, she raised the issue of me becoming involved in an idea that she and Rita were nurturing: that of setting up a regional organisation with a focus on women's health in Malaysia.

Fiercely in agreement then, I nevertheless thought it was more a conference conversation sharing mutual interests than a concrete plan. The idea did come into fruition and it led to my two-decade-long involvement in ARROW, first as a PAC member, then a BOD member, and now as its InfoCom Taskforce member.

The first ‘Advisory Group' met in 1994, as part of a four-year project called Changing Health Policies and Programmes: Regional Information Support on Women's Health. The early programme focus was an Information and Documentation Centre in Kuala Lumpur, and a vision that the resources it housed might be used by researchers, academics, activists and women's groups across the Asia-Pacific. The collection was well and truly established by the time the Advisory Group first met, but the ARROW staff group was still tiny (a documentation officer and an administrative assistant) along with its two co-Directors.

It seems to me that in the early years we spent a significant amount of time defining and refining ARROW's priority areas. What was most interesting to me in this period was that ARROW set for itself the goal of ‘support[ing] change in population policies and reproductive health programmes.’ I also recall some wonderful fiery contributions about whether violence against women would best be treated by ARROW as a core women's health issue for the purpose of advocating policy and service change. Discussion was robust and expressed differences in experience. Expression of difference was also welcomed within ARROW and treated as rich and productive.

In some ways, I think it took a long time to understand what ARROW was and was not. It was not, for example, a membership-based organisation. It was not a ‘peak’ body representing the interest of other organisations in the sector or in the region. It had limited reach in the early years, particularly in the Pacific. It had a programme advisory group made up of skilled and interested individuals but key organisations were not represented in it. It had no charter or mandate to represent women across the region. Yet it existed as a regional organisation due to the energies of committed women and it advocated within a space not otherwise claimed. ARROW quickly learned that it would not be constituency that would give it credibility, but quality, consistency and inclusive processes.

Later, the group was renamed as the Programme Advisory Committee and its existence was more formally built into the structure of the organisation. Its mandate is to provide programme advice and strategic direction and not governance, management nor operational issues. This was both a progressive and necessary clarification that took place so that staff understood their accountabilities. At times, expectations were blurred but at other times I felt that the PAC played a very successful and genuine role in contributing to the success of programme-related activities. I recall, for example, PAC suggestions that the new information bulletin should be slim, focused, consistent, and accessible and targeted to policy makers as a resource for quick reference, with a page of short sharp ‘definitions.’ It became, of course, ARROWs for Change (now renamed ARROW for Change) and reflected the PAC vision absolutely.

 

STORY 3: The early years: Perspectives from ARROW's longest-serving staff
— Uma Thiruvengadam

When I joined ARROW 19 years ago, I was just 30 years old, and had little exposure to women's health and human rights issues. I applied just looking for a paid job and saw an advertisement for a documentation clerk in the local papers.

When I came into ARROW for the interview, I was really attracted to all the books in the library, and so was happy to get the offer to join. ARROW was a turning point for me.

I hardly took leave in those early years. Every day was an exciting day at ARROW—I was learning so much. I could not wait for the weekends to end so that I could come back to work on Monday. Rashidah, our ED then, was one of the reasons I stayed. She was not like other bosses. She was firm but soft-spoken, always polite, and treated us all equally. Through my time working for her, I started to read case studies about what women went through, and I was able to empathise with their situations.

I think my first six years at ARROW were the best years in terms of atmosphere. We were a much smaller staff body and we were very much united. We would all go out for lunch together, and worked closely together. We would often volunteer to help each other meet deadlines. In the early days, some of the systems and policies may not have been in black and white, but we just practiced them.

ARROW has been through challenging times too. We had problems with funding to carry on our work and in one period staff relations went really badly. These struggles made me realise that being on top is not always easy, and whether we like their decisions or not, the ED is doing the thinking on the level of the organisation. I think that the thing that made ARROW grow through its challenges of the early days was its special relationship with its partners. Also, I think the fact that ARROW's ED and Board did lots of strategic planning and consulting with partners for evaluation and strategic planning made a difference.

We really cared for and took care of our partners—that was a priority. We also really focused on disseminating innovative publications and networking actively with other women's organisations and donors. All remain ARROW priorities to date.