INSIGHT

A society has evolved in Pakistan where people experience inequalities from the very first day of their lives. Here the facilities available to a person are determined by his or her economic class. Education is also not spared. Poor children go to poor schools and rich go to schools with better facilities.

Generally the poor children have one of the following four options.

First and the most desirable option is the private school near their home. These schools charge a fee in the range of Rs. 200 to 500 p.m. With this low budget the owner has to pay for the rent & utilities, teacher salaries, educational supplies and also earn a livelihood. They teach the curriculum designed by government’s board of education and their medium of education is usually English. Their attendance level is generally good. In the absence of better options the educational scene in dominated by these schools.

 Second option is the government school. Their medium of Education can be English or Urdu. Only parents who cannot afford to pay the private school fee send their kids to these schools. Generally the parents do not have good opinion about these schools. There are numerous complaints: lack of discipline, absence of teachers & unhygienic conditions are only few of them.

Third option, which is not always available, is the charity or not-for-profit schools run by philanthropists. These schools are started with a noble purpose and are relatively better managed. But such schools are rare and given the challenges in managing such a school we cannot expect that their number will increase dramatically.

Fourth and the last option is the madrassa. The madrassa offers a curriculum designed a few centuries ago and is based on memorization and rote learning. End result is not very promising. The students rarely learn the modern subjects, though many Madrassas now offer mixed curriculum with additional burden on the students.

In addition to the above there are some other types of schools like Islamic schools or Christian missionary schools operating in poor areas but their numbers are not substantial.

If we analyze the above list we may reach the conclusion that the future direction is towards the schools in the first category i.e. commercial schools. Go to any poor locality and count the number of schools and you will see that the majority of the schools are low cost commercial schools. This is a grim reality that we are living in a society where the education is almost fully commercialized.

If we accept this reality then we must also accept that no educational reform program can run without the partnership of these schools. The real challenge is how to achieve the following objects in partnership with these commercial schools:

1)      Ensure that we provide education to every child

2)      Provide books and basic facilities

3)      Provide proper guidance & mentoring for future progress

Ilm-o-Amal has designed two programs for this purpose:

1)      Provide educational scholarship to poor children so they can go to the best school available in their locality within a reasonable budget  2)      Student Connect Program to mentor these poor children with the help of children from schools with better facilities How the Educational Scholarship Program works?

The IOA process to award education scholarship can be summarizes as: reference, verification, decision, payment, review and sponsorship. Any member of IOA can refer a student for scholarship. The verification is done by the Education coordinator and the field volunteer of IOA. Decision is taken by the Management Committee of IOA. Payment is managed by the payments team of IOA. The regular review of the child and his or her family is done by IOA review team and finally the child is sponsored by a donor. This entire process is web-based and up to Dec 2009 IOA has awarded 110 scholarships using this process. We Inshallah aim to double this number within next 6 months.

How the Student Connect Program works?

Every child we support through educational scholarship also needs mentoring, motivation and guidance. We believe children from senior classes are best for this purpose. Children have freshness of mind, motivation and a desire to change the world. Student Connect program connects a student from a school with better facilities to a student of a school in poor location. This program is also web based. The mentor visits the child or family under his or her guidance once a month and spends a few hours with them.

Benefit of this IOA approach?

• Web based – join the programs from anywhere and any place
• Realistic, low cost and participative
• See immediate results which are verifiable and measurable
• It brings together all the different participants to make a difference
• It is based on self help and mobilizes existing resources
• We cannot open charity schools in every town or neighborhood but you can provide scholarship and mentorship every where

How can you join? If you wish to know more about our programs or join any of these programs please visit www.ilmoamal.org or write to us at info@ilmoamal.org