Educate a Girl Zakaat

A person’s most useful asset is not a head full of knowledge,
but a heart full of love, and an ear ready to listen,
and a hand willing to help others.

As explained in our previous reports, we have a programme, Educate a Girl, which is more focused in Girl education but under it we educate girls vocationally and the girls are usually 18-24 years old but Educate a girl Zakaat is for young girls age 4-16 to help them stay in their schools so they could get proper education which further will help them in achieving their dreams.

Girls who are from underserved, lower and middle class backgrounds, lack access to affordable, quality education. Some girls are often unable to continue or afford their studies due to loss of their homes from poverty, terrorism and communal feuds. Some fathers who have lost their jobs or businesses and/or have limited funds, will likely educate only the sons.

Keeping the above things in mind we realize that its our responsibility to come forward for such girls and while we were deciding that how exactly we should help or find such deserving girls, we came across this school which has almost a thousand deserving students learning and being educated in it for free.

Just to give an idea, the school that we visited was in a grass rooted area where the residents didn’t had basic facilities even. There was no proper system for basic necessities like water, gas and electricity so imagine what would be the case with education. Obviously there were not many schools In fact we think this was the only school for the 5 blocks in that locality. Not only that, this school had no support from government.

Obviously a school which Is running on funds only and doesn’t get any support from the government even, no matter how much work the school is doing for the society. Such school can provide only the basic things and that’s why we were not shocked to see that the building was not luxurious, it was just a building which was still in the process of being built and the class rooms had normal old furniture with old blackboards.

But there was something which was very different than other schools, we got to know that some of the students in the school are orphans and that’s why they don’t have any place to live so those kids live in the school and there is a place in the ground floor which is built for these orphaned kids so they could have a shelter at least and not only that, the school provides food for all the kids studying and usually teachers eat with these students although we know that in some countries it’s a norm that school provide foods or lunch to kids but this is not the norm in Pakistan and that’s why we were very happy and satisfied to see this and when we spoke to the administrator of that school, he said they try their best to do as much as they could do for these kids and that’s when we decided that we will help educate girls in this school because we felt so good to see not only a school which is helping those who couldn’t learn but also those students for whom its not easy to come to school or they are sometime working to earn to feed their families but at least they are trying for a better life and that’s what really matters: hope, because as long as you have hope for something, you try for it.

We learnt one more thing that no matter how small your efforts are but they always have a result or reaction. Because although we are just providing a semester fee for these students and trying to help that school a lil but we believe that it will give them an idea that at least there is someone who is thinking about them and that’s what really matters because maybe in near future these kids will do the same for some other kids.

We at Educate a Girl couldn’t wait to transform more lives and adding more and more girls in our community to help them achieve their dreams but that’s need a lot of preparation and also support that we seek from our wonderful donors, so we could transform the lives of these girls.

There comes a time when every parent departs from their children by leaving this world and every human being, no matter what their age, dreads that day of segregation. Many children living in this time and age are parentless and depend on their society to exist and thrive.

With constant change in economic and social circumstances, ongoing conflicts and political turmoil in many developing and transition countries like Syria, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, we are faced with many situations where the number of orphans and needy children is constantly increasing. According to UNICEF, there are between 143-210 million orphans in the world. This figure includes children who have lost either both of their parents or one of them.

The problems faced by orphans are complex and impact on their individual age and circumstances. The mental trauma and agony of witnessing warfare or losing parents and family members is not easy to deal with and requires tremendous courage and patience to recover from it and adapt to a new situation.

One might not be able to take away the grief of orphans and needy people but they can extend their hands in generosity to let them know that they are cared for and supported. Since we live in a globalized world, societies are inter-dependent on each other for survival and progress. From this perspective, people living in different regions of the world are responsible to help children in dire need of support and sympathy.

Keeping this in mind, we are trying our best to bring joy in the lives of these kids, however we could.

We visited Idara Al Khair with our team which is a school for orphans and those who couldn’t afford their studies. We met many kids over there and realized that it’s not only orphans who need our help and are our responsibility but there are many other kids as well who are less fortunate, although they have parents and are living with their families but still their families are not able to provide for the basic needs of these kids, no matter how much they wish to.

Keeping that in mind we realized that its our responsibility to help them as much as we could and that’s why we started working on this. And with support of our wonderful donors like you all, we were able to pay one semester fee for 30 girls last month.

These girls were so  young and the main festival was near so we wanted to make them happy somehow so we gave them gifts like teddy bears which is a part of another programme of ours.

We felt so happy because we were able to do something for those in need and we think it’s a blessing and for that we wanna thanks to all our donors, because it won’t have been possible without your help!

There are so many lives who are waiting for someone to bring light in their life and we are willing to do that as long as we have all your support.

Thank you!

Together, we are transforming lives!