Educate a Girl Zakaat

As the world is changing and everything is becoming more virtual, same is happening with education. People are learning more and more online as its more easy and fun for them. They don’t have to worry about not having enough time to attend regular classes or not having proper ways to travel to learn. They want to learn and they could do it whenever and wherever they want, with the ease of their homes or in extra time from their offices.

As we have a mission to educate every girl globally, its important to keep up with the technology and new trends as well. Because we are working towards a better future, its important to acknowledge what the future actually is and that’s why we partnered with Facebook’s Internet.org’s Freebasics platform and creating 1000 free online modules for girls to be able to learn and get educated wherever they are.

As we mentioned in our last report we already started working towards our module and our initial modules were up on freebasics in more than 5 different languages, we are so excited to update all of you that we have uploaded 100 modules on freebasics which are available for over 1 billion people and thousands of them are regularly reading these modules and learning from them.

We are so happy and excited about the feedback that we are getting about our modules and just wanted to say thanks to all our wonderful donors who are helping us in our mission and motivating us by showing that there are many people out there who are just like us and actually care about girls education.

We are also planning to enter another city for our live training and will update all of our donors as soon as we are done with the planning phase.

Together, we are transforming lives.

Dear wonderful donors of Educate a Girl, We hope this report finds you well. As we mentioned in our previous reports, last year was great for us as we were recognized as the top 2% women led initiatives in the MENA region by WEMENA, partnered with Facebook’s Internet.org’s Freebasics platform for the online version of our programme, launched in another city of Pakistan where we educated 250 girls as well as educated 1000 more girls in Nigeria. Same like last year, this year till now has been amazing and showing new ways to involve more and more people in our mission to educate million girls globally. We are so excited to share that on Freebasics Educate a girl pg, we have more than 50 modules now which are available for thousands of girls to read and learn from. For now we are more focused on having modules in soft skills like leadership, negotiation, team building as well as on entrepreneurship, mental health and coding etc. many of these modules are also available in different languages like Turkish, Russian, German urdu etc. So for now this was the update about our programme but the reason we are sharing this with you all is because we would like to get you all involved more in different ways. If any of you would like to translate our modules in different languages or would like to provide content than please come forward and contact us and help us in reaching our target to dissolve the issue of girl education completely. As all of this wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our wonderful donors like you all, we would like you to be more and more connected with us in our journey. Together, we are transforming lives

We believe that Educate a Girl and she will do the rest… We are amazed to see several alumni in great jobs, others simply open to life's possibilities and starting businesses and employing others. And this is what keep us motivated to do more and more for the education of girls but this year on the occasion of Mother’s day, we at Educate a Girl decided to educate some mothers and that’s why we have a mini project under Educate a Girl .. which is Educate a Mother in Pakistan and give her a future.. https://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/educate-a-mom-in-pakistan-and-give-her-a-future/

A mother is one of the largest influences in her child’s life and with this power comes responsibility. The care and love a mother provides, moulds her children into the adults they are destined to become, but her own education and financial success has a great effect on her children’s future. The great achievements of her life which her children appreciate today are all due to her attending school in her youth as a girl and this education has presented a beautiful journey to her transforming from a girl into a mother who is viewed in a positive and respectable light today.

Education is one of the most critical areas of empowerment for mothers and this education leads to social change and advantages for her children. Having an educated mother in developing countries is more important than ever because if a mother is well educated and has financial success through either going out into the working world or working from home using knowledge gained from education, her children will see their empowered mother as a role model for their own lives. 

Keeping all of this in mind we decided to educate some amazing mothers so they could help their children to reach new heights in life. And to make this happen we ask for help from our wonderful donors like you all.

Donate to Educate a Mother in Pakistan and give her a future.. https://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/educate-a-mom-in-pakistan-and-give-her-a-future/

This project is also competing for the bonus prizes through the GlobalGiving Mother’s day campaign and any amount you donate will help us in reaching our goal which in the end will go towards educating more and more mothers.

As mentioned in our previous reports, under our programme of Educate a Girl Zakaat, we are paying the school fee of those who couldn’t afford it otherwise and could accept zakat too. As by these reports we get a chance to connect to our donors so for this project we decided that we will keep updating or reminding our donors about zakat too and in this report, that’s exactly what we are going to explain.

The Zakat al-maal, one of the pillars of Islam (along with the Shahada, the prayer, the Hajj and the fasting of Ramadan), is a tax on savings. It represents an unalienable right of the poor upon the rich. Every Muslim is liable to Zakat, and must pay tax if their savings exceed a certain threshold called Nisab, which is indexed to the price of gold, or that of silver and keeping this all in mind and knowing its importance, we give this project our extra time and attention.

Many people might won’t know but Islam has specified the beneficiaries of zakat and which distinguish zakat from the charity.

Those who qualify to receive zakaat funds are as follows:

The poor and the needy are those who cannot meet their basic needs.

1. The destitute who live in absolute poverty as well as those who cannot meet their basic needs.
2. Those employed to collect and distribute zakaat.
3. Slaves who need money to purchase their freedom.
4. Those who have run into debt and cannot possibly pay it off, regardless of whether they have assumed debt for public or personal interest.
5. Those who struggle in the cause of Allah: This includes those who fight in defence of their religion and country as well as those who engage in any activity which aims to support and propagate Islam.
6. Those whose hearts are to be reconciled: These are those who have recently embraced Islam or those expected to embrace it. The duty of giving zakaat to this category of recipients does not belong to individuals but rather to government bodies, Islamic centres and charitable organisations that determine the real benefit behind that.
7. The travellers who are undergoing financial difficulties even if they are very rich back home.

Regarding the deserving beneficiaries of zakaat, the Qur’an states, “Zakaat is for the poor, the destitute, those who collect it, those whose hearts are to be reconciled, for those in debt, for the cause of Allah and the stranded travellers. It is a legal obligation from Allah. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.” (Soorat At-Tawbah, 9:60)

We hope this explains about zakat more and our wonderful donors and supporters like you all will understand the reason we began this project.

The mission is always same, to serve the humanity, be there for those who are in need so join us in making other’s lives better.

Together, we are Transforming Lives!

A person’s most useful asset is not a head full of knowledge,
but a heart full of love, and an ear ready to listen,
and a hand willing to help others.

As explained in our previous reports, we have a programme, Educate a Girl, which is more focused in Girl education but under it we educate girls vocationally and the girls are usually 18-24 years old but Educate a girl Zakaat is for young girls age 4-16 to help them stay in their schools so they could get proper education which further will help them in achieving their dreams.

Girls who are from underserved, lower and middle class backgrounds, lack access to affordable, quality education. Some girls are often unable to continue or afford their studies due to loss of their homes from poverty, terrorism and communal feuds. Some fathers who have lost their jobs or businesses and/or have limited funds, will likely educate only the sons.

Keeping the above things in mind we realize that its our responsibility to come forward for such girls and while we were deciding that how exactly we should help or find such deserving girls, we came across this school which has almost a thousand deserving students learning and being educated in it for free.

Just to give an idea, the school that we visited was in a grass rooted area where the residents didn’t had basic facilities even. There was no proper system for basic necessities like water, gas and electricity so imagine what would be the case with education. Obviously there were not many schools In fact we think this was the only school for the 5 blocks in that locality. Not only that, this school had no support from government.

Obviously a school which Is running on funds only and doesn’t get any support from the government even, no matter how much work the school is doing for the society. Such school can provide only the basic things and that’s why we were not shocked to see that the building was not luxurious, it was just a building which was still in the process of being built and the class rooms had normal old furniture with old blackboards.

But there was something which was very different than other schools, we got to know that some of the students in the school are orphans and that’s why they don’t have any place to live so those kids live in the school and there is a place in the ground floor which is built for these orphaned kids so they could have a shelter at least and not only that, the school provides food for all the kids studying and usually teachers eat with these students although we know that in some countries it’s a norm that school provide foods or lunch to kids but this is not the norm in Pakistan and that’s why we were very happy and satisfied to see this and when we spoke to the administrator of that school, he said they try their best to do as much as they could do for these kids and that’s when we decided that we will help educate girls in this school because we felt so good to see not only a school which is helping those who couldn’t learn but also those students for whom its not easy to come to school or they are sometime working to earn to feed their families but at least they are trying for a better life and that’s what really matters: hope, because as long as you have hope for something, you try for it.

We learnt one more thing that no matter how small your efforts are but they always have a result or reaction. Because although we are just providing a semester fee for these students and trying to help that school a lil but we believe that it will give them an idea that at least there is someone who is thinking about them and that’s what really matters because maybe in near future these kids will do the same for some other kids.

We at Educate a Girl couldn’t wait to transform more lives and adding more and more girls in our community to help them achieve their dreams but that’s need a lot of preparation and also support that we seek from our wonderful donors, so we could transform the lives of these girls.