By Shazah Khalid | Project Officer
09.12.2010:
The flooding in the summer of 2010 not only took thousands of lives, demolished millions of homes, and destroyed acres of agricultural land, but it even completely wiped out educational infrastructure and facilities over a third of Pakistan's landscape. The future of the nation; the youth were at a severe disadvantage. Hence, recognizing the lack of schooling facilities in the flood affected regions, Fatima Memorial Hospital in collaboration with its esteemed coalition partners have set up a school in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan.
Located in the outskirts of DG Khan in an area known as Haibat Mastui, the school has been successfully running for about a month now. Approximately, 200-250 students enrolled in on the very first day of the opening of the school. To effectively manage such a large number of students, five sections have been made with 40-45 students in each section. Given the wide disparities in the ages of the children, the sections have been made according to age and hence children of same ages have been grouped together. Each section is monitored by teachers who have all undergone extensive training sessions earlier last month at Lahore organized by the Fatima Memorial Hosptial. There is one head teacher; a Master's Level graduate who has been appointed as the Principal. All five teachers are being given salaries on the basis of their educational qualifications and work experience. Coming towards the operational characteristics of the school now, the teaching staff was provided with basic nursery-level syllabi from educational specialists from Fatima Memorial Hospital's community outreach program ABNI (Anjuman Behbood-e-Niswan-wa-Itfal). Taking into account the severe lack of educational material in the disaster-struck area, Eisaar Trust and ABNI have both generously donated plentiful amounts of books and stationary which includes all essential items such as blackboards, study mats, pens and pencils, eraser, notebooks and so forth. It is also pertinent to keep in mind here that currently no fee is being charged from the students, and all expenses are being borne by Fatima Memorial Hospital and itts collaborating partner Eisaar Trust and the Global Giving Donors To ensure the quality of education being provided and the general administration of the school, Fatima Memorial Hospital is carrying out extensive monitoring. A monitoring and evaluation committee has been developed consisting of influential locals from the surrounding regions. These locals monitor basic administrative factors such as compliance regular timing schedule, regularity and punctuality of teachers Also, educational experts from the community outreach program of Fatima Memorial Hopsital are holding telephonic mettings with the Principal of the school on a weekly basis for monitoring and evaluating the school's progress and also to help troubleshoot routine operational problems, if any. Since the academic school year in Pakistan begins in March, thorough evaluations shall be conducted in February for each child to assess their competence level. Examinations shall be taken accordingly depending on the individuals child's competence and skill level. We will keep you updated with the progress of the school through this forum. Once again, we would like to thank you for your valuable contributions towards educating the displaced youth of Pakistan. Please do keep visiting Global Giving for receiving further updates.
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