Pakistani School Security Improvements

It is hard to imagine that with only $0.50 cents a day you can put a girl through a year of elementary school. Jamila is 20 years old and is from the People’s Attock Colony, Pakistan. She is currently enrolled in the fifth grade at Barakat Primary School. Jamila has five sisters and four brothers. Her father is unemployed, but two of her brothers are carpet weavers.

Jamila enjoys all her subjects and wants to get an education because an education is the key to success and she wants to live a successful life. She knows that getting an education will give her the opportunity to excel. She also believes that girls and women have the same right to an education, because they have the same rights as men in society.

Jamila’s family shares her vision of education being an opportunity. She believes that an education means knowledge, happiness and a future. Jamila wants to continue her studies after elementary school, and wants whatever profession she chooses to be an opportunity to serve her people and her country. Jamila hopes that society becomes more open-minded and other girls like her continue to see the advantages of schooling.

However since Jamila is already 20 years old she may not get the opportunity to pursue her education past elementary school despite her family supporting her. Since her father is out of work and they are relying on two of her brothers to support their entire family there is a good chance that she may get pulled out of school and married off to help support her family. With your help we are able to ensure that school is a safe place for her to come and learn while she has time. An educated mother is four times more likely to send her own children to school so even if Jamila isn't able to complete school you have helped to give her a gift that she can then pass on to her own children. Afterall education is the only way to lift a family out of poverty and with your help more girls like Jamila will have that opportunity!

Thankfully the immediate threat of deportation by the Pakistani government has passed for now but we still need your help to be better prepared for the next time they decide to deport Afghan refugees from the areas surrounding our schools. 

The Pakistani government categorizes Afghan refugees into three categories. Those that are in the country illegally, those with fake papers and those that are there with legal papers and are approved to be in the country by the government. The big push a few months ago was to try and get the refugees with false papers or there illegally to leave the country and repatriate to Afghanistan, thankfully all of our students are in the country legally but it lead to a lot of uncertainty among the community surrounding our schools. 

As a result of the threat we've seen a 20% decrease in student enrollment in our schools in Pakistan. The most obvious difference is that we only have 185 girls enrolled between all three schools that we operate. We're working diligently with our offices in Pakistan to figure out a solution as to why we have so few girls enrolled. We are hopeful that as time goes on the uncertainty of the future will pass and we'll see enrollment rates go back up. This is not the first time that the Pakistani government has tried to push the Afghan refugees out of the country and so it's only a matter of time till things get back on track and the hope is that when they resume trying to push refugees out of the country we'll be better prepared to reassure our students that school will always be a safe place. 

We are thankful for your continued support as we continue to work through all of the curveballs the Pakistani governement throws at us.