'Pakistan must put in place CSR regulations to accelerate human development,' CEO, Human Development Foundation, Pakistan

The 'Human Development Foundation' Pakistan (HDF) has been working in Pakistan for about 13 years. It is a sister organisation of HDF North America which was formed in 1997 by expat Pakistanis who gave it as a 'gift' to Pakistan on the country's golden jubilee. HDF Pakistan is focused on programme delivery while HDF North America raises funds in the USA.
Similarly another sister organisation, HDF Canada also raises funds through the expats living there and supports HDF's programmes in Pakistan. HDF Pakistan also partners with various donors, corporate sector and the Government for community development works under the growing trends of CSR and public-private partnership.
Following are some excerpts from BR Research's recent sit-down with the HDF Pakistan's CEO in Islamabad:
BR Research: How do you see the current state of Human Development in Pakistan?
Azhar Saleem: Pakistan is endowed with so many resources, but the irony is that it ranked 146th among 187 countries this year on the 'Human Development Index'. There are three major pillars of human development: education, health and economic development - and all three must be holistically focused on to turn this situation around.
We at HDF have worked out a cumulative effect of attrition caused due to health and education issues in Pakistan. Out of the 1,000 new-borns, about 72 die in the first year, and another 17 die by the time they get to the age of five. About 310 never go school, and therefore, 601 get enrolled, out which about 547 complete primary educations. Out of these, only about 291 go to secondary school and just about 146 manage to qualify. About 100 of these stop their education here and only 46 land up in the colleges. That's less than five percent of the 1,000 children who had come to this world. How sad is this story!
The way out of the development quagmire is more education, and I shall dilate a little more on it. As per the Article 37(B) of the Constitution, it is the state's responsibility to provide free and compulsory secondary level education to all. This has also been reiterated in Article 25(A) in the 18th Constitutional Amendment, where education has been declared as the fundamental right for children between the ages of five and 16. Right now, the literacy rate is around 57 percent. Although there have been efforts to improve the situation, but there is a realisation that a lot needs to be done.
BRR: How has HDF Pakistan organised its activities in these three areas of Human Development?
AS: We at the HDF concentrate on people at the bottom of the pyramid. However, due to resource constraints, we can only do focused work. We have picked up about 30,000 households in over 300 villages across Pakistan. For these households, we design programmes built on the holistic 'Human Development' approach that was championed by Pakistan's very own Dr Mahbub ul Haq. We have very detailed data about these households - about things like household size and composition, its health, education and economic status, etc - which forms our baseline data. All our programmes are designed keeping the households' needs in mind, and their specific situation. As we move along in the process, we carry out interim sample surveys and impact studies to judge the effectiveness of our programmes.
Our approach works like this: In every village that we go to, we create village development organisations (VDOs), development organisation / groups (DOs), children forums, etc, from among the communities. We have created over 2,000 such organisations and grassroots institutions so far, with proper organisational structures. Members of these organisations are taught to make village development plans - in all areas of development aligned with HDF's goals that are based on the millennium development goals. HDF Pakistan has over 750 people - most of them social scientists - working with these community organisations as their partners and assists them in their pursuit.
These grassroots organisations identify their problems and come up with their own solutions, which is very important for ensuring the sustainability of the programmes. We only play the role of a facilitator or catalyst. Having developed model villages, our aim is to create sustainable hubs of communities that can be replicated by others and an overall ripple effect is created. With this process carried forward, we contemplated creation of model UCs, tehsil and districts.
BRR: What kind of programmes has the HDF Pakistan rolled out so far?
AS: We are very lucky to have a board that is very active and closely supervises all stages of planning, implementation and monitoring. We design integrated programmes for social mobilisation, education, health, economic development and sustainable environment. We are working in all the provinces of Pakistan and Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK) through our regional offices.
In Education, our aim is that every child goes to a school, regardless of public or private. If there are no schools in a village, we make one. We had started with the creation of primary level of schools, but now in pursuance of our obligation towards the Constitution, we are also promoting and creating facilities of elementary and secondary level of education, particularly for girls. We have about 150 schools of all types across the country. Now with the support of donors like DFID and USAID, we are using innovative methods of distant learning through electronic means. We are also carrying out with their help advocacy at all levels involving the communities at grass roots and going up to the union councils, tehsil, district, provincial and federal levels.
In health, our focus is on primary preventive healthcare, besides some small-scale curative healthcare services that keep greater focus on the healthcare of mother and child. In the villages where we have our presence, HDF operates its own Community Health Centres. Our community health workers go around each of those households every month, and check on the health conditions of people, particularly mothers and their children. If there is a problem, they are referred to the hospital or our own clinics. In curative healthcare services, we conduct simple tests and give medicines.
In Economic Development, we are focused on Skills Development. So far, we have provided skills to more than 11,000 people. We also facilitate building the means of living by giving micro credit to skilled people. We have so far rolled over Rs102 million in small loans and joint ventures for economic development at grassroots level. But we are different from the microfinance providers as we don't charge exorbitant mark-up rates. We just charge nominal 10 percent of the loan value, to take care of administrative expenses right in the beginning. Thereafter, only the principal amount has to be repaid to us by the borrowers.
BRR: Please elaborate more on your economic development programme.
AS: To give you an example of our joint ventures with the community, let say we buy a calf (a young cow) worth Rs 25,000. The person in the community with whom we partner would raise that calf into a cow - and our team would be monitoring the progress - and then sell it after nine or 10 months. On sale, we get our principal back, and profit is divided into three parts - our community partner keeps two parts, and we take the third to put it back into a pool for economic development so that more people can benefit.
We are also doing joint ventures with groups of people, where investment levels reach up to half a million rupees. With them, we create ventures like a block factory under a proper agreement on legal paper. In both cases, our objective is that these people get the bulk of their profits. For moving forward in our endeavours for achieving institutional and programme sustainability, we are now studying some innovative social enterprise models of economic development that we will start implementing soon.
BRR: Where does Sustainable Environment figure in your programmes?
AS: The holistic approach demands that we focus on Sustainable Environment as well. But that is a big area, and we can only do small activities. So, besides activities like tree plantations, we are focused on provision of clean drinking water, better sanitation arrangement, and solid waste disposal. Until now, we have installed very sophisticated water filtration plants - some of them can do reverse osmosis process on brackish water - in 20 locations. We have also done bigger projects and have gone to the extent of making two 'delay action dams' and another two 'check dams' in Zhob area.
Whenever our country is faced with natural calamities and disasters, HDF also comes forward to first provide relief and rescue and then gets involved in rehabilitation of the affected people. In the year 2000, it worked in drought affected areas of Balochistan, did a lot of relief work after the earthquake of 2005, worked to help the IDPs in 2009, and was also involved in helping after the 2010 and 2011 floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Rahim Yar Khan. We are currently involved in rebuilding four of the flood affected villages into model villages.
BRR: What do the impact assessment studies tell about the effectiveness of HDF's interventions?
AS: In education, our studies have indicated that the Net Primary Enrollment rate in our areas has improved from 81 percent in 2010 to 86 percent in 2012 (as against 57 percent overall in Pakistan). Infant mortality rate has been found improved to the tune of 25 per 1,000 live births as against 70 overall in Pakistan. In less than five years, mortality rate has been found 31 per 1,000 live births as against 89 overall in Pakistan. In our areas, 96 percent children from 12 to 23 months age are fully immunised against EPI. Moreover, 97 percent women of reproductive ages in our areas are also fully immunised against tetanus.
A study of our micro-credit programme reveals that 30 percent of our borrowers improved their monthly income from Rs 5000 to Rs 7000 per month.
BRR: What role can the corporate sector play in improving Pakistan's Human Development scorecard?
AS: The government is doing its bit, the development sector is doing its bit and the corporate sector is also involved in development works under the concept of CSR. But we all need to join hands. HDF Pakistan has worked with various companies in Pakistan to develop model villages, to help upgrade schools and to establish health centres. However, for a more active corporate sector involvement, I feel that Pakistan needs to put in place CSR regulations to streamline this process. The Indian government has already enacted some laws making CSR mandatory for companies.
There are models in the world which can be followed: for instance there is an approach where two percent of a company's profits before tax, two percent of the time of its people, and two percent of the products it produces are given out to the marginalised communities. I think that the least, and the most recommended thing would be to allocate two percent of corporate profits so that corporate sector can play its part in development. This concept is growing in Pakistan, but generally, there is lack of trust on part of corporate entities that want to do CSR but want to do on their own - so they create their CSR departments. Development is specialised work, so the corporate entities must allocate some budget and collaborate with those who are expert in development works.
Since most of the human developmental aspects have been given out to the provinces, my suggestion to the provincial governments is that they should get all the NGOs and corporate sector on one platform and carry out a complete mapping of the thematic as well as geographic area needs. A coordination of all development initiatives is essential so that there are no over-concentration of efforts in certain areas and gaps in other areas.