The foundation stone-laying ceremony of an educational facility in the improvised hamlet of Goth Noor Muhammad, on the outskirts of Karachi was held on Tuesday. Chairman, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF), Hussain Dawood laid the foundation stone.
The model village is being jointly developed by PPAF and Shell Pakistan, who have joined hand to develop the village anew at cost of Rs 35 million in two years time. Located approximately 25 kilometers away from Karachi near solid waste dumping site, Goth Noor Muhammad is a small hemlet comprising about 100 households. Having no access to potable water and other basic necessities of life, the men, women and children are living in terrible unhygienic conditions and eke out their living by sifting Karachi city's garbage. The closest one is some 10 kilometers away in another village. Most of the children are illiterate as they neither could afford nor could go to attend school in the nearby village.
The locality lacks health and educational facilities while its dwellings comprise bamboo and date palm branches covered with discarded and worn out clothes. The residents store rainwater in ground well and use it for drinking and other purposes.
PPAF and Shell Pakistan have entered into a public-private partnership to transform the Goth into a self-sustainable and integrated village development project. The program is aimed at improving living conditions of the residents through provisioning of better housing, healthcare, and educational facilities. It also entails social mobilisation of community empowerment through the formation of village committees.
The reconstruction of houses would be supported through the usage of indigenous technology, materials and energy efficiency. Streets would be paved and proper sewerage and rainwater drainage system would be laid down. The village infra-structure would be further improved with the provisioning of electricity and with the addition of greenbelts and streetlights. Educational facilities would be available not only to the children but to the adults as well. The proposed school would also serve as a recreational spot for the community with special emphasis on sports.
PPAF is the lead apex institution for community-drive development in the country and the largest source of pro-poor spending outside Public Sector Development Program and the federal budget. Set up as a fully autonomous private sector institution, PPAF enjoys facilitation and support from the Government of Pakistan, the World Bank, IFAD, USAID, USDA, KfW and US corporate sector. Outreach of PPAF now extends throughout Pakistan and its micro-credit, water and infrastructure, draught mitigation, education, health and emergency response interventions have been widely recognised. As the largest institution of its kind in the world, PPAF has received high performance ratings from donors.
Since April 2000, cumulative disbursements of PPAF (both lending and grant based) stand at over USD 1,000 million of which financing for microfinance had the largest share (USD 600 million). It has partnered with 87 organisations working in over 80,000 villages with more than 242,000 communities and self-help groups at grassroots level in 127 districts.
PPAF's cumulative operational activities entailed over 3.8 million micro-credit loans impacting directly or indirectly 23.5 million (with 100 percent recovery rate), over 22,800 educational, health, water and infrastructure projects impacting 13 million persons and over 427,000 trained individuals (partner organisations' staff and communities).
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