Educating 1800 child workers in Pakistan

 Madiha studies in the third grade at Zindagi Trust's non-formal school for working children. Her family migrated to the city of Rawalpindi from a small village in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. She was orphaned when she was only five when her father's death left her mother alone to raise her and her five siblings. Her mother found work as a maid and took her along as a helping hand. She doesn't remember her family ever doing well enough to afford more than one meal a day. Despite the tragic loss of innocence, Madiha has a positive and mature take on learning and loss:

"For me learning is anything that teaches you a lesson - we learn both from the textbooks and from our daily life experiences, whether they are good or bad. Learning is something that is totally yours - you can share with others but nobody can steal it from you."

She starts a typical day by going to work with her mother in the morning where they clean houses till the afternoon, when it's time to go to school. Right after getting back from school, she does her homework. She then helps her mother with household chores after which she spends an extra hour and a half at night preparing for the next day's classes. Her teachers are very pleased with her performance and active participation at school. 

Madiha was not always in school. At the house she helped her mother clean every morning, she saw children going to school and longed for their colourful uniforms, books and bags. She dreamed of reading books and writing neatly with colourful pens. She waited to empty the trash in the children's room just so she could collect the torn printed paper - looking at scraps of paper, trying to piece together the words and pictures drawn on them was her favourite part of the day.

She wanted to learn how to read and write and asked her mother repeatedly to let her go to school. Despite her mother's initial refusal, Madiha had faith that her mother's love would  one day send her to school. This happened when her mother found out about Zindagi Trust's free afternoon schools for working children.

Madiha remembers her first day of school fondly - bright, friendly faces and teachers urging her mother to put all her children in school, to give them the chance of a better future. Today, two of her siblings are also studying in the same school and Madiha aims to complete her studies to become a teacher. She and her mother are thankful to the support of donors like you who made the change in her life possible.

Links:

• Paid to Learn: non-formal afternoon schools for working children

Abid is a twelve-year-old studying in the fourth grade. He is the son of a labourer who works on daily wages and struggles to earn a meager income to support Abid and his five sisters, who live in Kot Lakhpat, an urban slum in Lahore.

Abid has grown up around extreme poverty, one of the cruelest realities of big-city life. His circumstances forced him to seek a job as staff help in a general store near home, where he works in the morning. In the afternoon, Abid and three of his sisters go to the Peco Road School, established and run by Zindagi Trust under the Paid to Learn program for mainstreaming working children into primary education. 

Abid is a keen student who never misses a day of school. His teachers find him to be one of the brighter children at school – he scored above 95% on his last term exams. Showing maturity and self-introspection beyond his years, he tells us that he always questions himself before taking decisions and that this practice has helped him understand himself.

He lives by the motto that if you believe in yourself, the world can be yours. He has written his favorite Urdu saying at the entrance of the school:

‘Do what you want to do and do not limit yourself because what you believe, you can achieve’

He wants to grow up to be a pilot.

On behalf of Zindagi Trust, a big Thank You to all our supporters around the world for making it possible for Abid and other children like him to go to school, to dream, and to believe.

Links:

• Zindagi Trust