Road Towards Sustainability

By Wajida
Assistant Education Coordinator, KKA Region

The education program in HDF Karachi Kachi Abadi region has faced adversity from the start. The primary problem was the unavailability of place/building for schools. In the beginning, a place was either contributed by DO (Development Organization) member or by the teacher but only on a temporary basis because their houses are too small to accommodate their families as well as students. So up to November 2002, although there was high demand from the community for us to open schools, the issue of locales was a major limiting factor, and we were only able to open nine schools. All our schools were forced to change location twice, thrice, and even closed completely for one to three months. The building owner refused to volunteer due to his/her own problems. Furthermore, the classroom environment, being in very small rooms of a small home, was continually disturbed by household work.. We were all frustrated to deal with such situations, and the children were very disappointed.

At last our KKA team evolved new strategy to rent out appropriate building for these schools. This strategy was discussed with the community who welcomed it as the only solution, and the sustainability vision of our education program depended upon it. The PTAs (Parent Teacher Association), especially mothers, took the lead role in identifying buildings, negotiating rent contracts with the owner, and deciding fees of children to meet rent and other building related expenditures. Here is the story of one of such school.

Kiran Child Friendly School is located in Bilal Colony, Malir Town Karachi. This school was opened in November 2002 with resolution of Kiran Female Development Organization. Zubeda Baji (DO president) volunteered the roof of her house, while other members of DO contributed to carpet the roof with mats. The stairs of school were very dangerous and unsafe, and the teacher had assigned duty to some elder children to help younger children to cross stairs. Due to the joyful activity-based teaching methodology, parents and DO members were very inspired and more admissions were demanded. But this small roof school was unable to accommodate increased numbers.

We shared the new idea of renting a building for the school with PTA and DO members. Two women, Dos Kiran and Aakash, collaborated and found a place, talked to the owner and school was moved to a much larger, safer building. This one school expanded to four schools with 87 enrollments. After a month, the owner of this new school building demanded Rs.5,000 in advance and Rs.2500/ monthly rent, which was very high relative to the prices they had agreed upon before. All the mothers went to him to discuss the matter, but the owner became greedy when he knew about school (commercial school) and refused to take lesser amount. It was very difficult time, everyone was at a loss for what to do. Through laborious, daily meetings, the PTA and DO members finally decided to leave him, and search again for yet another, more economical place.

With the grace of God, they successfully found a new place, strongly negotiated with the owner, and signed a binding agreement on legal stamp paper. They shifted all the school materials to the new school building by themselves. One of the ladies contributed charts and posters for decorating the school, and one of the DO members agreed to wash the school every day at a low cost. Fortunately, this building is even better than previous one.

The PTA campaigned to increase the enrollment so that each and every child of the community can receive a quality education. The successful arrangement of the opening ceremony of schools also done by PTA and the name of ALLAH (Quran Khawani, Meelad) school has been started successfully. They feel satisfied now to see their children learning in the school, and I too feel such pleasure to see the shining eyes and smiling faces of the innocent children that never went to school before.

Now the PTA of this school is requested by another nearby woman DO of Muslimabad (Katchi Abadi of Malir Town and HDF’s program area) to allow them for school in evening shift in this school building. This DO has accepted the requested and Inshallah, one more school will be opened in this school building in February 2003.

No doubt about it—this is genuine community participation, ownership and a road towards sustainability.