By Steve Murchie | Interim Board Member, Pakistan Project Lead
It's been an eventful few months since our last update. Not only has our partner in Pakistan -- Bedari -- launched an exciting new aspect to the girls' educational curriculum, but we've had a number of new funding opportunities emerge as well.
Exposure Visits Update
In our last update, we described a new addition to the educational programming for our students: exposure visits, or as we called them when I was growing up: field trips. An incredibly powerful part of early education, these exposure visits help the students experience the world, learn some history and science, and marvel at the options that life might offer them. Not surprisingly, the first event was a success, and Bedari hopes to be able to do many more.
In the first outing, the girls, staff, volunteers and chaperones -- 94 people in all -- visited the Khewra Salt Mines, the Katas Raj Temples, and the Kallar Kahar Lake. In the second outing, a smaller group of 36 visited Rohtas Fort.
The trip made a very strong impression on the girls, many of whom have never left their own village. In the words of one of the girls, Masooma Arshad:
My brother had gone on a trip to Islamabad, and he told me so many stories when he came back. I wished I could go too. Today I am so happy; I would go back and tell him so many stories. The best part of the trip was the travel. We sang so many songs, we sang so loud. It was such a liberating experience.For many more details of the visits and the girls' reactions, please visit the Bedari site: http://www.bedari.org.pk/first-time-in-their-lives-girls-go-out-on-exposure-trip.
Global Giving UK Matching Funds
As you are no doubt aware, Global Giving is the primary fundraising channel for all Girls Education International programs. To our surpise and delight, Global Giving's UK operation has been working with a number of sponsors on matching programs for donations made through the UK site. We just concluded a match program called We Believe in Pakistan, and while we didn't perform as well as we'd like, it is one of our first outreach efforts to the UK community. We believe this is just the beginning of a new relationship with UK donors.
As a matter of fact, a new matching program just started on March 7 -- in preparation for International Women's Day on March 8 -- as we're once again a participant. If you are inclined to recognize the Day, please donate at Global Giving UK's 2016 We Believe in Girls Campaign. There are £12,000 of available matching funds, with special bonuses going to organizations raising the most in total, and from the most donors. It's a great way to leverage your contributions.
New Corporate Sponsor
Also through Global Giving UK, we were selected to be the recipient of a creative gift from a new corporate sponsor called Shoes by Shaherazad, a startup shoe designer in the UK who has pledged a portion of profits from sales to several organizations including Girls Ed. We're very excited about this program and look forward to hearing and sharing more from the principals.
In closing, the new year has brought a lot of hope for the continued success of our program. We still have a lot of work to do to raise the funds needed to sustain the program and extend into new areas like the exposure visits, but with your help we know we can keep the vision alive. Please spread the word of our program, and help grow our contributor base.
Thank you, as always, for your support.
Steve Murchie
Denver, CO, USA
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