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Education News / Students Organisation => Education News => Topic started by: sb on June 25, 2013, 09:36:47 AM
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Educating for change
Karachi:25 June: Some cows were grazing in the nearby fields and the village comprising a few makeshift huts looked deserted in the severe heat, except for a small hut echoing a Sindhi poem.
The village had no school, so some of the women from the same village, who received their education from other cities, established a school on self-help basis.
They announced that they will educate the children and the villagers helped them to build a hut to be used as a school building. Goth Gul Muhammad Mallah, a small village of coastal sub-division of Sujawal, district Thatta, is like many other villages, which are suffering due to lack of educational facilities, especially for girls.
According to the official record, the entire Taluka Sujawal has only eight state-run middle schools for girls, which located in remote areas and cannot cater remote villages. Also during Super Flood 2010, many of these schools were damaged, particularly the primary school buildings, depriving the village girls of their legitimate right. Several of these schools still lay in a dilapidated state and are neglected by the government.
"We had been confined to our abodes after completing primary education. The situation persisted for a couple of years, until this opportunity to study at our local village school. Rejoining academic activities is a jubilant experience," remarked, burqa clad student Naila Mallah.
Premature and underage marriages remain a routine in our village. Therefore, girls have very few years to complete their education.
A secondary class student, Shahida Ameen said that she has witnessed women marrying very early in her village and therefore getting infected with many diseases, because they are unaware of basic health and hygiene matters. "I have asked my father not to hurry, so I may complete my education," she said.
Many villagers were appreciative of the initiative and said that they were glad to help the school. They claimed that among some of the positive arguments used by the young teachers, the most prominent and thought provoking were underage marriages and premature birth, which also results in depriving girls of basic education.
Many times young girls are deployed to go for grazing cattle and are routinely engaged in fetching water from far off water courses.
Sain Noor Muhammad Serai, a known academician and consultant of the programme said that it was only because of the enthusiasm of girl students that it was possible to make the school. "They were too keen to impart further education that a number of them, even after being disconnected from their academic atmosphere, resolved to make it work," he said, adding that some women and girls who were married and even had children were also taking advantage of the school, which is a very important and positive step.Dawn.