I would like to tell you about The Citizen Foundation (TCF) , one of the largest NGOs in Pakistan. TCF educates 266,000 students in over 1,600 school units across the country. The schools are located exclusively in areas where students are at risk of poverty and often have no other education options. For the entire school education of a child, namely 10 years from kindergarten to exmatriculation, TCF requires 210,000 Pakistani rupees, which is around €1,080 today (as of December 10, 2020).
HOW WE MET TCF
After our sales have steadily increased over the last few months and years, more resources are available for our social impact program #onebagonechild . So it quickly became clear to us that we needed an external partner with whom we could enable more children to attend school. When we looked at various NGOs in my first few weeks in Pakistan, it was particularly important to us not to financially support just any NGO. We were looking for an NGO that uses its resources in the best possible way for the well-being of children and works transparently and responsibly. As we spoke to several people on site, the name TCF kept coming up; their reputation preceded them.
WHAT MAKES TCF
TCF School's curriculum promotes an interactive, child-centered teaching approach with many hands-on activities. Particular emphasis is placed on the personal, moral and social development of the students. TCF has developed its own curriculum, which is very respected compared to the official government curriculum. TCF puts enormous effort into training its exclusively female teachers in the best possible way. The teachers spend several weeks training every year. They are continuously evaluated by internal and external committees and their training is adapted accordingly. The teachers usually come from the same neighborhoods as the children themselves. The fact that the teachers are exclusively female increases the parents' acceptance of sending their children to school. The schools are often located in communities where there was no school before, or where the children are the first generation of their family to attend school.
OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR CONTRIBUTION
Since November this year we have been a dedicated donor of two primary schools in Karachi. The two schools have a total of 398 children and I was able to visit one of the schools, in Malir Town, at the end of October. At this point the schools were still open and the children were present. Even though the students were a bit shy at first, I quickly noticed how comfortable they felt at school and how much they enjoyed being here.
GIVE 10,000 CHILDREN ACCESS TO EDUCATION BY 2025
At the start of the new school year, at the beginning of 2021, we will be opening an afternoon shift in two additional TCF primary schools in Pakistan together with TCF. By opening an afternoon shift, children who previously did not have the opportunity will have the opportunity to attend school for the first time. With your contribution we will enable around 360 more children to attend school.
While one of the two schools is further north of the country, near the city of Peshawar, the other school is in a coastal town in Balochistan, one of the four provinces in Pakistan. The children here can look out to sea from the school. When I visited there a few days ago, the school was already closed due to the lockdown in Pakistan. So I only met the teachers who were preparing homework and materials for the children to work on at home. I met two of the students when they were picking up their homework and they had a card with them as a small thank you.
