The project focuses on areas where female literacy is as low as two per cent.
A new project aims to make 2,000 women in the flood and militancy affected Swat-Kohistan region bilingually literate.
They will be educated under a literacy programme which is being implemented by a local non-governmental organisation, Idara-Barai-Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT), with the financial support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under its Small Grants and Ambassador Funds Programme.
The project’s launching ceremony was held at Bahrain, with district government and military officials joined by hundreds of locals in attendance.
IBT Executive Director Zubair Torwali told the audience that IBT had gotten requests from people across northern Pakistan to start such projects in their areas. “It means that innovative approaches do work.”
He asked donors to look for other innovative projects as well, as “they will surely have long and sustaining impacts on the lives of the people”.
Torwali termed the Swat Kohistan Women Education Project as a small endeavour on their part to drive away “the encroaching darkness” in the target community, because “lighting a candle is better than wailing in the long and perpetual dark gripping the society.” Girls were barred from going to school during the militants’ rule.
Some 2,000 women in three union councils of Bahrain — where the female literacy rate is barely two per cent — will be educated by establishing 50 women education centres for teachers and instructors.
The need for the project can be judged by the fact that 80% of the existing government schools are dysfunctional.
“The programme is innovative in the sense that adult learners have a chance to learn things in the language they grew up with, Torwali said.
He further said that the syllabus is designed to include subjects such as cultural studies, ethics, sociological and political issues.
Bahrain Assistant Commissioner Muhammad Naeem Khan said that the government is keen to solve many of the problems of the people, but unfortunately Swat had recently been through the worst crisis and it will take time to address all that ails the region. He appreciated the role of civil society and urged them to come forward for public-private partnerships.
Wazir, whose daughter has been employed as a teacher for the project, said, “When I used to hire a tutor for my daughter to get educated beyond grade 5, people would laugh at me and say I was wasting my money. Now, as my daughter serves the community with a decent teaching job, the same people ponder what could have been if they had also educated their daughters.”
Published in The Express Tribune, March 3rd, 2013.
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