It takes two – Active Citizens open up new avenues in Multan

As young people growing up in Suraj Miani – a neighbourhood of Multan – Abdul Rahman and Shumaila Bibi always felt the absence of IT training institutes in the area. The nearest computer training institute is 7 – 8 kilometres away and the nearest internet café is 3 kilometres away.

Perhaps the absence of a technology institute is felt more acutely by young girls and women of the area. Multan being a conservative city, relatively more avenues for personal growth are open to men than women. This includes opportunities for higher education and professional courses. After graduating high school most women face added restrictions by their families, and unnecessarily venturing out of homes is frowned upon.

At the Active Citizens training that they attended Abdul Rahman and Shumaila proposed a facility where the residents of Suraj Miani – especially women could benefit from technology education and brush up their language skills.

 A local NGO offered them space in their offices to hold the classes, and the youth group managed to arrange 4 computers for the classes – including their personal lap top computers. Now came the hard part: convincing parents of young girls to let them attend the free computer and English classes.

Abdul Rahman and Shumaila arranged two separate meetings: one at the Union Council head quarters for the male members of the community, and one for women and young girls at the residence of a community member. Besides these community meetings the young Active Citizens also took part in a door-to-door awareness campaign to recruit students for the coaching centre.

When asked about the problems faced by the youth group, Abdul Rahman responded that: “the biggest hurdle faced by us was convincing parents of young girls to let them attend the classes. The area we live in is very conservative and women stepping out of their houses are frowned upon”.

Ultimately 90 women and 25 men signed up for the computer classes. As a bonus the young women were also offered and English language course taught by Shumaila while Abdul Rahman along with another volunteer teaches the computer classes. The students are tested after the course is completed and successful candidates are awarded a certificate by the youth group. The ages of the students range from 14 years to 23 years and classes are held four days a week.

Besides acquiring technical skills the training also gives the students the confidence to pursue more challenging opportunities. A clear indication of this is the fact that 3 girls after successfully attending the computer course managed to get jobs in private schools where they teach Microsoft Word and Excel to young female students. This has also inspired other women to sign up for the classes.

The Gypsy School

Ramshackle gypsy settlements are a common sight in nearly all cities of Pakistan. With no fixed occupations and no land, members of the gypsy community live in uninhabited areas till they are forced to leave by the local authorities. Gypsy children are often seen begging for money or food at road sides, shops, and in residential areas. Gypsies have always lived on the fringes of society and are usually viewed with suspicion.

But these children like all children are entitled to education. This realization did not escape Faisal Idrees, a young Active Citizen from Multan. Faisal decided to do something in his capacity to rectify this situation.

Faisal enlisted the help of two of his friends and together they formed a youth group to facilitate the provision of education to as many gypsy children as they could. According to Faisal: “Every parent wants to send their children to school but most people, and especially marginalized communities do not know about Article 25 A and the right to education”.

Another problem that these young people faced was the sad fact that the money these children collect by begging contributes to their family’s income. And so parents with no fixed source of income can sometimes perceive education of their children as a threat to their family’s well being.

Faisal and his friends decided to set up a make-shift school in the gypsy camp and started a door-to-door campaign to convince parents to let their children attend it. In the beginning this seemed to be an uphill task as not most parents were reluctant to loose the income brought in by their children, and they also viewed the strangers with suspicion.

But despite the resistance the three young people resolved to march on ahead; by the third meeting with the community members they were allowed to set up their ‘school’.  Since they did not receive any support from the gypsy community in terms of a place to hold classes in, they started teaching in the first free space they could find. On the first day of class 4 children showed up. Gradually the number of students started increasing. By the end of the first week they were teaching 22 gypsy children. By the end of the year the school had 138 students.

According to Faisal, initially the group members pooled in their money to buy the necessary supplies to run their school, but as the number of children steadily increased these meagre funds started proving insufficient. To overcome this Faisal and his friends came up with a simple yet smart solution: they met with principals of different private and public schools of the area and convinced them to put up a box in the school where students could donate used books and notebooks. At the end of each week members of the youth group visit these schools to collect the donated books and stationary items. 

Notebooks which have been filled using pencils are erased and made ready for use again. And books which cannot be used are sold and the proceeds are used to buy pencils and other stationary items. 

Faisal and his friends are now allowed to use empty tents to hold their classes while the tenants are away but have to empty it once they return. The irony is not lost on the youth group who have dubbed their school the Gypsy School. 

The youth group has enjoyed other successes besides providing these children with basic education. One of these is convincing parents to admit their children to the local public school. So far 28 children have been enrolled in this school. Consequently these children have stopped begging and now lead a much healthier life style.

Children attending the Gypsy School are also encouraged to give up begging through stories and activities. The group of young Active Citizens hopes to dissuade as many children from begging as possible and to facilitate their admission into schools.

Faisal and his friends now aim to reach at least 300 children by the end of this year.

Traditions that need to be defied

Progress can be defined in a number of ways, but some that come to mind immediately are: moving forward, adapting to circumstances, and evolving. It is surprising then that the way we teach children in primary schools and what they are taught have remained more or less unchanged over the years. This lack of progress is what motivated a youth group in Multan to start a Social Action Project (SAP) to help rectify the problem.

The group is named The Janbaz Youth Group and their SAP aims to correct education at its very root – primary school. The SAP was conceived and is being led by Noshaba who is a trained psychologist. The group holds the view that the only way to move forward is to motivate children to do better in school and keep them interested in the material being taught. A key contributing factor to this is implementing a fun and interesting way of teaching in primary schools.

So far the group has managed to arrange four training sessions for primary school teachers focussing on modern teaching methods and techniques. These sessions were attended by 28 teachers in all. Typical areas of discussion in these training sessions are traditional teaching methods that are still being implemented in primary schools and their limitations, and advantages of adopting modern teaching methods.

Progress can be defined in a number of ways, and one of them is being brave enough to challenge established conventions when there is a better way to do some thing. The SAP started by The Janbaz Youth Group does just this – it is a step taken by a group of young people to replace inefficient and dated teaching methods with newer and better ones, it is a step in the right direction; it is a step towards progress.