What's in the bag?

We set up five schools in Sikanderabad for older women who had never received formal education. This is some of the stuff that was given to each school. Each school currently has 15 women over the age of 15. Each of them was given a bag-pack, a stationery box, one maths notebook, one Urdu notebook and a set of three books for Urdu and one math workbook. The teachers were given attendance registers, blackboard, chalk, coolers and a pedestal fan. Students from Ziauddin University school of Dentistry also gave a generous donation for these new students so that we could buy additional stuff for them. The first thing we bought were color pencils and number blocks so they can learn better by visualizing it.

The curriculum we are teaching is called Jugnoo which means firefly in Urdu. It is very symbolic in Urdu literature and has always been used to imply something that gives light and leads the way even though it is so tiny. This curriculum has been introduced by literatepakistan.org. The Urdu course is specially designed for people who have never been to school and after learning for just two hours a day for 90 days they would be able to read Urdu newspaper, write a letter and do everyday maths. The maths workbook also starts with basic principles and would make them skilled in simple math by the end of the workbook so that they can manage their daily and monthly expenditures better.

This is Samina's Urdu notebook. She is 19 and soon to be married. Before this she had never been to any school because the village she came from had age old traditions which never allowed women to attend school. Now since one of these new schools is right next to her house in Sikanderabad she is super excited to show up every day. Unfortunately she had the nasty habit of chewing Gutka which is a stronger form of tobacco chewed by some people in South Asia. Our student volunteer counselled her regarding the harmful effects and she was shocked and has vowed to cut down and eventually quit. It is not just the basic education we are trying to impart but also awareness regarding healthy habits too which is lacking in this area. Gutka chewing is a prevalent habit in slums as it is a cheap form of drug and is easily available. What most of them do not know is that it has a very high chance of causing oral cancers. Soon we will hold a proper awareness session for all students regarding Gutka and other drugs and all their lethal side effects.






These are photos from Samina's maths notebook. We are very proud of her for learning so quickly. She is a hard-worker and we are so grateful to have been able to bring her this opportunity.

This picture was taken at the school that is run in the afternoon at the PHC after the clinics for the day have ended. Samina and her friends study in this branch and absolutely love their teacher Gulnaaz. Gulnaaz is another hard worker and almost a superhero without a cape who deserves a special post just discussing all that she done and continues to do. We are very prevailged to have people in our corner who go out of their way to make other's lives better. They may not have enough but they are leading way for other women to learn from them and strive to be better.

By Zainab Faiza

The Plan For Now

I am a doctor. My sister has an MBA, my mother has an MSc, all my female cousins and aunts have Masters degrees too. Education for women is very important in my family and most other families I know here in Karachi, Pakistan. We do not have a system of student loans so all the educational expenses are borne by the families. For those students whose families are not able to pay for the college, they can get scholarships but unfortunately most of them then have to apply to smaller programs.

But there are still certain factions of the society which up till today feel that educating girls is a waste of money and effort. This mindset has vastly changed over time with conscious effort of government authorities and NGOs specially in the bigger cities here. Sikanderabad on the other hand is a squatter settlement where mostly uneducated people from small villages all over the country have emigrated to in search of small jobs. Most of their views are those that have been prevalent in their villages for decades based on how their ancestors saw and did things.

This photo is from the earlier meetings I had with some of the women here who had never attended school. I told them that I would be taking a photograph at the end and they insisted that their faces would remain covered for it. They were a group of 10, ranging from 15-45 year olds who had the most beautiful smiles and met my team with utmost humility. I wanted to know why they had never attended school when they were young. One of them said that back in their village only boys could go to school and so they never thought it was even possible for them. One of them said she started school here but her parents did not earn much so they decided to continue her brother's education and made her in charge of household chores so her mother could work as a maid. One of them said her father let her and her sisters go out to attend classes for religious education but feared they would not listen to him anymore if he sent them to a school. What is commendable now though is that all of them are doing their best to send their own children to local schools. They understand the importance having been uneducated themselves and when I asked them if they would like to enroll into school despite their busy schedule, they all very excitedly agreed.

In order to empower half the population of this area we have decided to start with basic education of older women with the grant received from the amazing MacJannet Foundation. The initial idea is to have five schools being run simultaneously in five different blocks of this area so that maximum women can benefit. At the Primary Healthcare Center (PHC) this idea was discussed and five women were identified who had at least completed their basic primary education. We could have hired professional teachers or even the University students could have taught them voluntarily but our plan is to keep it completely community oriented and to encourage them to stand up for themselves. In the past we have noted that some of our plans could not be implemented as they seemed too foreign to them and they could not relate to the teacher/organizer and always saw them as an outsider who was unaware of their background and cultural limitations. University students would visit them for awareness programs and other activities.

These women from different blocks were then met at their homes to see where they would be conducting classes. Their families were also invited to the PHC where they were informed about the plan and all their reservations and concerns were discussed with Dr Jawaid Usman who is the Head of Department of Family Medicine at Ziauddin University. An ideal time suiting the women had to be set for all the schools. Most women send off their kids to school in the morning and then begin doing their daily chores. Some of them work as cooks and maids in other parts of the city and are not home in the morning, It was decided that 3 of the schools would be run from 10 am to 12 pm and the other 2 would be run from 3-5 pm based on the teachers and students availability.

Four schools would be run in the teachers' homes and one in the PHC after the clinics have ended. Each teacher would be payed Rs. 5,000 (US $50) from the grant money every month. For now they will be teaching 15 women each from their lanes who are above 15 years of age and have never received any formal education before. I have been meeting them every week and all of them are extraordinary women who fought with the society barriers and some even their own family members to seek basic education. All four of them have also graciously offered to conduct classes in their own homes without any charge. With the prize money they will be provided with books, copies, bags, stationery and black boards. Some awesome person even donated mats and pedestal fans so these new schools so the students would be able to study comfortably.

For now the students would be taught Urdu and Mathematics as the basic subjects. Most of them speak Urdu as their second language so starting them on with English would take a while. All the new teachers are extremely excited to be able to help others like them and are determined to ensure that they will make a positive impact in their society.

In the coming weeks I will post how the University students are doing their part for their neighbors.

By Zainab Faiza

The Back Story

This photo is from my favorite place in the city. I graduated from a private college in Karachi. Most of my class-fellows were from well to do families, we had our own cars, wore the latest trends, ate out almost everyday and we were studying in the second most expensive school in the city. Right next to our school though is a squatter settlement. Gulshan-e-Sikanderabad, home to 130,000 residents from all ethnicities of Pakistan, including thousands of Afghan refugees, this is the place of  poorest of the poor who moved to the metroplois in hope for a better life. The average number of children per house is 7 and the families earn on average, less than $100 a month. Two sides of the settlement are bordered by huge water bodies of sewage and the houses with electricity face on average 8 hours of power cuts a day. Since it is a squatter settlement it was never planned out and tiny houses after houses just popped up so they have no underground water supply and the residents purchase water from the hydrants every single day. 

Yet amidst all this I have found the happiest people I have ever met. This photo is from the Primary Healthcare Center Ziauddin University built for this population. Since 1996 the center has provided medical consultation and medicines for minimal fee. The current clinic fee is 50c and the medicines are provided on 1/3 of the price in the market. The clinic ensures that all children are vaccinated based on the special WHO program for Pakistan called EPI and the center is specially supplied with all free of cost medicines for Hepatitis C, TB and Asthma from the government and other NGOs. Besides health related work the center has also held computer and stitching-sewing courses for the residents to train them to earn for themselves.

As a student I entered the area during my first year when we went there to hold a Dengue awareness camp for about 60 people. They all looked at us as if we were celebrities in our white coats, Most of them were barefooted but they had the biggest smiles on their faces when they greeted us. I had never met anyone this simple and more satisfied with life than these people yet compared to us they had literally nothing good going on in their life. After that every chance I got, I was back there, be it awareness camps for TB, Malaria or hand-washing techniques, Polio vaccination rounds or just visits to their schools. Contrary to popular belief the locals very much want their children to be vaccinated and I've seen them willingly wake up their children from sleep just so they could receive their polio drops when we went door to door for the campaigns. Though uneducated they are well aware of the harsh realities of these preventable diseases and are always keen even for booster follow ups.

During my third year we had our Family medicine rotation at the center and I finally got a chance to interact with the population on a patient-doctor level. The respect I've seen these people give their caregivers is not seen in the private hospitals I have rotated at. When my fourth year started I became the president of this welfare society at my school called KaraHealth Welfare Association and I decided to focus on them once again. All the fundraisers that we conducted were mainly to pay for the medical and surgical bills of these patients for treatments at tertiary care hospitals. I had an amazing group of juniors who helped me do monthly awareness camps at the center. We even called in our friends from dental school for free consultation who came in with a ton of supplies for the patients. Oral health clinics have now become a norm at the center. I realized that having such a short gap between each pregnancy has caused the children to grow up without a childhood as even a 3 year old kid has two siblings after him. For this reason we started weekly hour long sessions for children at the center. Any child could come, we'd give them paper and colours and ask them to go wild while discussing their dreams with our student volunteers. It was all new for the children and they really looked forward to this one hour every week. We provided sewing machines, monthly groceries, school fee, rent money, and money for surgeries and rehab for all those who approached us.

KaraHealth is not functional anymore but the students are still very much involved with the community next to their school. In all my time there I had always wanted just a little more help despite our fundraisers because there was always so much to do and so many more people in need. In the most exciting phone call of my life, back in March, I was told by the head of department of Family Medicine at my school that we were nominated for the MacJannet Prize 2016 for the community work and he wanted me to be interviewed by them. I had never heard of this program before and I was so infinite-ley grateful to have been chosen for this. The amazing Amy Newcomb took my interview and told me it was to last for 15 minutes. Hats off to her patience she listened to me babble for 50 minutes about all this! It was indeed a pleasure to talk to her. It was a huge honour to be even nominated for this, never did I think we would actually win the second prize and get the grant for $5k. Ha that was the second best phone call and I was just so thrilled that someone was helping us to help this community better!

I, with all the doctors and workers at the center are forever grateful for the prize money as it will help us serve this growing community. There is a lot to do but we have started with baby steps and I will try to upload regular posts with photos and videos to show how it is coming along. I plan to do individual profiles of our helpers and the community members so that a two-sided view is uploaded.

A big thank you to the MacJannet Foundation again for considering, choosing and helping us. Here is a link to their announcement: http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/blog/2016/06/06/winners-of-the-2016-macjannet-prize-for-global-citizenship/

By Zainab Faiza