Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Education, Headlines, Poverty & SDGs

PAKISTAN: Citizens’ Schools Show the Way

Zofeen T Ebrahim

KARACHI, May 31 2005 (IPS) - Some nine years ago a cattle pen stood where now rises a pink school building, one of the original five schools established by The Citizen’s Foundation (TCF), an experiment by five affluent Karachi businessmen that has taken the form of a movement across Pakistan.

Ironically, it is not the mosquitoes, as the name of the area – Machhar Colony – suggests, but the hordes of flies that have invaded the place, along with a burgeoning migrant population. Like the rest of the now 195 schools built by TCF, this 6,000-sq-ft building includes an administrative block, six classrooms, an art room, a library, a play area and a canteen.

In 1995, a handful of affluent businessmen decided they had had enough of after-dinner talks where they discussed what ailed their country, and then went home and slept off the guilt. They felt they were not giving back to the country what they owed.

“We decided we needed to stop talking and do something more meaningful. There were options and choices – setting up of hospitals, or funding family planning campaigns,” says Mushtaq Chhapra, one of the six TCF founders.

But the more they looked deeper into the nation’s mire, one problem seemed to stand out glaringly – illiteracy – the root cause of all malaise. “We needed to give the underprivileged the opportunity to study. Education should not be the preserve of the privileged alone,” says Chhapra.

And so the group decided to build schools in areas not covered or underserved by the government.

The plan is so simple and doable that one wonders why it could not be adopted by the government. “Once the area has been earmarked and we have the plot, we begin building,” says Chhapra.

TCF wields the advantage of having an architect of international acclaim on its board. “Our buildings are beautiful but not necessarily expensive. All material used is local and the schools are designed in a way that they require minimum maintenance.”

Once the building is ready, in about eight months, teachers who have been undergoing further training are brought in. TCF has a policy of hiring only female teachers although the schools are co-education.

“The idea is that parents feel secure that their daughters are being taught by females, which is a major concern in some rural and remote communities. For all the teachers we provide transport so that commuting is not a problem,” according to Chhapra.

Surprisingly, co-education has not been an issue, except in two areas. There, officials segregated the boys and girls. “We want the boys and girls to study together. These boys when they grow up will respect women more than their fathers ever do,” adds the founder.

The process of socialization, though slow, is having a positive effect, says Neelam Habib, TCF’s manager of donor relations, who regularly visits schools and even homes.

“Over a period of time, we have observed a change, even in the attitude of mothers who would come for parent-teacher meetings. (Before) they would be loud, crass and at times even abusive. Now the same women have become gentle, come properly dressed, hair combed and speak softly,” she says.

Habib never fails to marvel at the mothers who have been the driving force behind sending their daughters to school. “They don’t want their daughters to end up like them – as mere domestic help. A lot of them also feel that their adolescent daughters are safer in schools than they would be if they’d stay home, where they could be in danger of abuse and violence.”

TCF offers the same courses as those prescribed for government schools, but they include supplementary books. The medium of instruction is Urdu, but English is a compulsory subject from nursery onwards, explains Seemi Saad Azad, manager of the organisation’s marketing and volunteer programme. “The ones who pass out from our schools are able to converse in English.”

A nominal fee of 125 rupees per month (two U.S. dollars) is charged for students studying in primary grades and 175 rupees for those in the secondary section. Books and uniforms can be purchased from the school on an instalment plan.

“When things come for free, it loses its value, so for even those who cannot afford – about 75 percent – they are given a scholarship and they pay 10 rupees a month only,” says Azad.

TCF’s target is to build 1,000 schools across Pakistan and educate 350,000- 360,000 children by the year 2015. This also happens to be the education target set by the global Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Somehow this does not seem too tall an order for TCF. For, so far, they have delivered all that they promised. “By this year we aim to add another 50 (schools),” explains Habib proudly.

“We have, to some degree, overcome our teething problems in these nine odd years and consolidated and gained strength. The climb now will be easier,” she anticipates as the group has built good relations with both the government and the donor community.

“You’d be surprised at the philanthropic spirit people can muster once they know that the cause is good and that their money will not go waste,” she adds.

Among the many myths TCF says its schools have forever put to rest are the ones about parents not wanting to send their children to schools but instead enlisting them to work, and that daughters should not be permitted to study in a co-ed system.

Make the rounds of a few TCF schools and you will come up with countless real life stories, each more heart-rending than the other.

Of children like 10-year-old Imran, now in Grade 3, the only breadwinner of a family of eight siblings. Every day after school he “goes to a nearby cement factory and collects the leftover cement bags from the dump, reuses them to make envelopes and sells till late in the night.”

Or like Farkhanda Aziz, whose mother died the night before she was to sit for her board exams. She was persuaded to continue by her teacher and the principal, who escorted her to the examination hall, and when the results came the whole school celebrated her brilliant 86 percent result.

There are kids who sometimes go to school, neat, clean and spruced up, smiling and enthusiastic, but who have not had a morsel to eat since the previous day. Others live in homes with no electricity or piped water but sit in front of PCs for computer studies.

According to Azad, the key to the TCF schools’ success lies in the “belief that we can do it.” Their formula is simple enough – apply proper management skills to a human development issue and be transparent.

What they have attained seems monumental when you meet the children and the difference it has made to their lives and their households. But if you start measuring TCF’s success in terms of figures it comes to providing a service to a mere 10 percent of underprivileged children.

“We’ve shown a way; the government can clone this success and others can follow suit. We have, after all, limited resources,” says Chhapra. They also have a long list of students waiting to be enrolled.