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EDUCATION AGAINST ALL ODDS: THREE MEN TAKE ACTION FOR EDUCATION IN A KARACHI SLUMDuring the 1960s and 1970s, the unplanned hilly terrain of Qasba Colony, Karachi , attracted many job seeking settlers, mostly from the North West Frontier Province . Qasba did not have clean drinking water, let alone proper houses, or proper systems of roads, electricity, gas, telephone or recreation facilities. Since there was no facility of waste disposal, sanitation was a great issue. Diseases and infections plagued the people of Qasba. With very few schools, education was also at its lowest. The situation kept getting worse without effective support from the government or any other organizations. It was under these conditions that three social activists, Waheed, Latif and Faqeer planned to unite in order to bring improvement to the ailing situation. In 1994, with financial assistance from a more established and active social development organization, the three citizens started an in-house coaching center where children were educated free of cost. Within a year, Waheed, Latif and Faqeer started up a social services organization, which they called the BES, and converted the coaching center into the Naunehal Academy, a small school for the children of the area.
As the school grew in size, the members of BES realized that a proper school facility was essential to provide quality education to children. They started looking to buy land, but getting land in the area was not easy. Land grabbers were common and often a plot of land was illegally sold many times to different owners. The BES, with the active involvement of Waheed, Faqeer and Latif, began the struggle to acquire land. Eventually, the Society was able to buy land from its legal owners, but they only had proof of their purchase on paper. Due to the illegal sales of land grabbers, the land had many illegal claimants who were drug dealers, part of the mafia, politicians and even mullahs. Waheed, Latif and Faqeer were put in jail. Cases were filed against them. Even when gunmen fired rounds of bullets outside the plot where the Naunehal Academy was being constructed, the construction continued. Despite extreme financial constraints the BES took loans to construct Naunehal Academy and refused to let anything deter them. Soon after the Naunehal Academy was up and running, BES initiated a two-pronged strategy to uplift standards of education for boys and girls alike and to address health issues. Some of the projects that BES undertook were: • The establishment of a Dispensary to cater to the basic medical needs of the people, which were being ignored by the government. • A Maternity Home was opened, as all other such hospitals were very far and too expensive. • BES made Free Medical Camps in the settlements with the help of the community. • Dai Training was essential as many women lost their lives due to lack of maternity homes. • Vaccination Training was given to ten people. • Through the Annual Polio Day , BES has vaccinated over 30,000 children with the help of other organizations. • Sanitation is a crucial issue that BES continually promotes. • Approximately 50 sewage lines were laid in Qasba without government help. • Credit programs were started to help small businesses, especially women. Women's education and health has always been on the top of the BES agenda. The Society was the first Community-Based Organization in Karachi to educate women. Breaking an extremely backward mindset of the society was an enormous task. BES supported the role of women in politics as well. It campaigned for women during elections. Women were also supported financially and medically. The Non-governmental Organization Resource Center (NGORC) in Karachi and BES entered into a formal partnership in 1999. BES had, by then, achieved great successes but was still lagging behind in organizational structuring and its operations were still inefficient. To grow as an organization and to expand the impact and efficiency of the services it offered, BES would have to learn more about the NGO sector, donors and about organizational development. BES turned to NGORC, Karachi for support and turned its concentration on capacity building and the expansion of its projects. NGORC helped BES learn how to conceptualize projects and how to write proposals. The next step was to introduce BES to the network of donors. This exposure to donors helped BES fund its projects and scale up its already successful though small-impact projects. NGORC also worked with BES to ensure that the agency underwent internal re-organization to attain better financial management and allocation of resources. Through training and advice, NGORC expanded the knowledge base of BES and exposed the agency to new ideas that would enable BES to function more effectively. Today, Naunehal Academy is a two-story building that educates 400 students per year. BES has an annual budget of Rs. 350, 000, with a total of 14 donors. Currently, seven projects are underway. BES's achievements go beyond the Naunehal Academy . BES has transformed, to a great extent, the stereotypes against women, by educating them and by promoting their contribution to the work force, which was previously dominated by men. BES has gone a long way to provide hope to the residents of Qasba. It is such organizations that NGORC hopes to promote and strengthen, so that people can organize effectively to transform the societies that they live in and make them healthier, more educated and prosperous.
An initiative of Aga Khan Foundation U.S.A
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