By Jahanara Shiraz | Director of Academics, Non-Formal Education
Hello and Happy Spring!
Here's what we've been up to over the last few months:
Planting for Spring
Students in our schools for working children celebrated spring through a Plantation Week of sowing seeds, looking after baby plants, and learning about the ecosystem through a combination of lectures and hands-on activities. This activity is held across our schools every spring to create environmental awareness among children who spend most of their days on the street or at work. The children were motivated through a competition which awarded a special prize to students who looked after their plants best until they flowered.
Shiny New Uniforms
New uniforms and shoes were distributed to all the students of our Peco Road School for Working Children, thanks to a kind donor, Nadia Azam. Family poverty has forced the children frequenting this school into the rigours of working life from a cruelly early age. New, clean clothes and shoes remain an unaffordable luxury for them despite the hard hours they put in at work before and after attending our school. They were delighted at their gifts and conveyed their thanks to the Azam’s by making posters and posing with them for photographs.
Eye Exams and Care
The Layton Rahmatulla Benevolent Trust (LRBT) team conducted training sessions in our schools in Karachi and Lahore for our teachers to learn how to examine students eyes to screen for common eye diseases (such as red eye, cataract, glaucoma, refractive error, Vitamin A deficiency and eye injury). Our trained teachers conducted eye exams in all our schools for working children across Karachi and Lahore and identified 197 students as needing follow-up examination and treatment. Eye doctors from the LRBT visited our schools to examine and treat the pre-screened students who were given prescription eyeglasses, prescriptions for medication or referred to specialists in the LRBT hospitals for further treatment as needed.
Thank you for your continued support which lets us bring these programmes to the working children in Pakistan's urban slums.
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