'What I am today is because of our school and the efforts and affection of our teachers. We were living in the dark ages before we got this school in our village!' says Rizwan, who is pursuing chartered accountancy in Hyderabad and is among the first few students of the Hilal Public School at Haji Khan Goth, a remote village in Sanghar district.
The school was established in 1997 by the Green Crescent Trust, an organisation based in Karachi. GCT runs more than 50 schools across Sindh delivering quality education to 8,000 children of the underprivileged communities.
Before the GCT founded this school, the village children had to go to a low-standard government school seven kilometers away. Most villagers could not afford to send their children elsewhere to get good schooling.
Rizwan and his classmates made it to the high school and a few of them, including Rizwan, went to join the Cadet College at Sanghar where they did their matriculation and intermediate and are on their way to seek higher education. "Our teachers spent many long hours with us after school every day to get us prepared for the aptitude test of the Cadet College. Had they not had helped us the way they did, we would not have had made it," Rizwan acknowledges gratefully.
Two girls from Rizwan's class have completed BSc, becoming the first female graduates from their little village. Muhammad Alam of the Tharparkar district narrates a similar story. From his village in the Thar desert, he was brought to Mithi, the district headquarter, by his father who got him admitted in the newly opened Hilal Public School back in 1999. He lived with his uncle to pursue better schooling right from class 1 and did his matriculation with flying colours last year. Today, Alam is one of the hosts of a popular radio programme, "Udaam", aired from Radio Pakistan. He is a bright college student and aims to pursue a career in the broadcast media in future.
The first batch of 18 students to pass out from the Hilal Public School at Mithi comprised 12 A-one graders. Four students got A-grades and two got B. They need a good laboratory and many of them want a library in their school.
Out of the several success stories of silent education revolution, GCT is bringing about through its Hilal School network across the province of Sindh is about Rubina, now the community co-ordinator of a UNDP-funded health project in Rehri Goth, a small fishing village in the suburbs of Karachi. A confident, young girl, clad in the traditional burqa, she is a motivated social worker and aims to serve the community.
"The girls in our village have not even dreamed of having access to quality education and pursuing a career before we had GCT people who established a Hilal School here and attracted the attention, respect and confidence of our parents and community elders to send their children, specially girls, to their school", Rubina recalls.
Today, many girls of Rubina's age at Rehri Goth are educated mothers and housewives and a few of them have chosen professions like teaching to become income-generators for their families.
One of the trustees and chief executive of the Green Crescent Trust, Zahid Saeed, who owns a pharmaceuticals manufacturing company, said that his organisation aims to provide inexpensive quality education to those who need it most - the deprived children of the rural and suburban communities.
Before opening up a new school, the GCT team liaises with the community to identify a most likely location; and, in most cases, the premises is provided by the community. Recently, the villagers of Sohrab Khan Goth near Northern Bypass in Karachi donated 1,200 square yards of land to GCT to set up a school without losing time. They were so keen to see their children going to school that the Trust had to built thatch-hut classrooms urgently, and more than a hundred children were admitted the first day. "At present, we are running 50 schools across Sindh and have targeted to set up 400 such schools by 2020, and cater at least 100,000 children," Saeed claims.
In the troubled times that our nation is facing, the efforts of social sector organisations are a source of great hope for the future. It is the need of the hour that the government, the corporate sector as well as individuals give all-out support using all possible means to enable them to help the masses on a large scale and enable the poor children of the country to become educated and productive so that they may become responsible citizens of tomorrow. There is no other way to build a better, prosperous and secure tomorrow for Pakistan.