Schools: Educating underserved girls in Pakistan

March has always been the busiest time of the school year. End of academic session, final exams and result: a time both students and teachers look forward to. Teachers are excited to begin everything new, setting up both short-term and long-term goals. While all this arrangements were on, the first cases of Covid-19 were reported in Bhara Kahu, and the area was completely sealed with no one allowed to exit or enter.

The lockdown halted all economic activities rendering the daily-wage earners jobless in the area. Most children in our schools and their families have been affected. With similar situation in Sheikhupura, with the help of teachers who are mostly local residents, we identified households in urgent need of support and created lists with all the necessary information, selecting 300 most deserving families who have had too little or nothing to eat since the lockdown. Our community-based volunteer team, on April 5 late night, managed to distribute food ration bags among the families in both Bhara Kahu and Sheikhupura. We send over hand washing soaps with basic hygiene instructions too. Since then, we have been raising funds to help out the families on monthly basis. Some of our generous donors donated through GlobalGiving

The government has announced that they will not allow the schools to open until the end of the pandemic. Since the lockdown, our teachers prepare weekly homework packets for the students: these along with notebooks and stationary are delivered to the students. We will continue to do this till the reopening of the schools. We understand that life during pandemic is difficult for parents and children alike, confined to overcrowded, small houses in vulnerable communities, limiting their ability by containment and physical social distancing among other issues. To avoid lasting damages, such as forced child labor to bolster family income and early or forced girl marriages, we are scaling up support for children and their families.

Please consider donating to avoid lasting damage to these children and their families.