Peace Schools for Children - Pakistan

Maryam Ahmed is now going to her school very regularly. Her mother, who works in a paper factory, drops her at school before going to work. Occasionally her teachers meet Mrs. Ahmed in the morning as her both parents have very busy routine and cannot meet the teachers during school hours. Sometimes her teacher visits her home on Saturdays to inform her family about her progress in school. Maryam has passed her mid-term exams but she feels that she could have done better if her best friend, Saba, had not left school four months ago to go back to Afghanistan with her family. She always helped her preparing for the exams. She has contact number of Saba’s father, who left earlier to make arrangements for arrival of his family in their home country. Maryam is planning to call her soon after the final exams in April.

The Government of Pakistan has requested all the registered and unregistered afghan refugees to move back to their home country until March 2017, which has resulted in reducing the number of students all our schools in Lahore (2), Gujrat (1) and Sialkot (1). To deal with this situtation, in last few months the teachers and School Management Committee comprising of parents, teachers and local leaders have taken some concrete steps to improve the number of students and management of the school. Our teachers visited homes of their students in pairs and met their families. The visits were supported by School Management Committees. This activity built trust of the families in host communities and they felt encouraged to send their children to our Peace Schools, thus reducing the number of drop out students. This advocacy and social mobilization technique resulted in strengthening the role of Peace schools in local areas and thus attendance of students in the school. Due to such efforts students like Maryam and other children in her community have joined our schools on regular basis and has raised number of our beneficiaries to 1014 children.

School Enrichment Program of our Peace school ensures the social development of the students to improve their academic skills. The school initiated health, reading and art & craft clubs in 2015 which have continued to improve health and hygiene facilities and practices and to enhance the artistic and creative abilities of the students. A surprise hygiene check was also conducted in December 2016 to make sure all students are strictly following a healthy lifestyle. Through extra coaching classes of reading club the students are enjoying group readings of different stories according to age groups.

Our Peace schools celebrated Color day in the month of November. It was very exciting for the students as they dressed up in color clothes for their school. Later all the students and teachers shared lunch with each other. Such small events helped us making school environment more joyful and a learning place for children.

In next few months we have planned more programs to further improve the quality of education and social development of the children of afghan refugees and host communities.

Links:

• http://www.facespakistan.com

• Pictures (DOCX)