The quiet struggle

Tens of thousands of people have better lives, because of the struggle of a few people determined to make a difference

Struggling with the effects of a seasonal cold-and-cough in the slightly smoggy air of Peshawar as well as the ataxia associated with a creeping neurological nasty, a greater struggle awaits. Getting to grips with understanding how things were going in the schools set up to serve the children who work in the brick-kilns on the outskirts. It is almost impossible to imagine what life must be like if you are a child of the brick-kilns, living as modern-day slaves, often in debt-bondage for generations, a life of unremitting hardship.

Into the lives of some of them in recent years has come the Abaseen Foundation, a medium-size NGO that I have supported for the last 11 years. I first worked with them in the aftermath of the ‘05 quake, then down the years in Swat and Battagram, at various hospitals and health centres that they run usually in partnership with the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and conferences, most recently on mother and child nutrition. The brick-kiln schools are a major project, now incorporating a feeding programme that is to be inspected later today, an attempt to get a little protein into the kids’ lives as well as a little reading, writing and arithmetic.

This is not the stuff of headlines. It is difficult work carried out mostly by people like myself who give our time and expertise free, pro-bono. There are a couple of paid staff at either end of the operation in UK and Pakistan, but mostly it is voluntary. Tens of thousands of men, women and children have better lives, are healthier and happier — because of the struggle of a few people determined to make a difference.

I come here today not so much to blow the trumpet for Abaseen though a little free publicity never hurt anybody, but much more to highlight the work of countless thousands of people and the organisations they work for — the much-maligned non-government organisations… the NGOs.

The NGO sector has come in for a lot of stick in recent years, some of it justified but an awful lot of it is not. Much of the criticism comes from people who would not know one end of an aid programme from another but line up to give a beating to another poor old donkey. Some of the journos I have met over the years who have written knocking copy about NGOs, have, when cornered, grudgingly admitted that their stories — some but not all — were written after a leisurely piece of desk-top research rather than a slog out in the fields following those that deliver vital services to the poorest and neediest.

‘Everybody’ it seems ‘knows’ that NGOs are up to no good, are nests of spies in the pay of India/the CIA/Israel and for all I know the Galapagos Islands. They run around in smart jeeps, staying in expensive hotels (much like I am right now, paid for by the generosity of a supporter) and leech donor funding into their own capacious pockets.

Now I do not deny that it happens. I have seen it happen. And where it does happen it besmirches the names and work of those who give selflessly and unsung. Those that unbeknownst to many of you provide the social glue that holds together many of the lives of the people you may see from a distance but never socialise with. They will not be sitting at your table. Wiping their fingers on your napery. Sitting there looking skinny and unwashed or ill-lettered.

But they will be sitting in classrooms at the brick-kiln schools. They know we are coming. They have prepared presentations. Some of them are individually sponsored; children the sponsors will never meet who have sent clothes and shoes from England for them. For the girls in one of the schools on the edge of the tribal areas, there is the tension between traditional culture and a desire for a life and an education beyond narrow boundaries. We will visit, complete the monitoring forms, write reports, hold meetings, give advice, take photographs and then wave goodbye. Some of the team will return to the UK on Saturday, others continue the work here. Just for a change try saying ‘THANK YOU’ to them — because they deserve it.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2016.

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