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Female students are supported to acquire an education, instead of having to drop out, or miss out entirely due to poverty.
Hidaya
strongly believes that females need to be properly educated as they are
the future mothers and therefore the most important building blocks of
our societies. History has proven that illiterate mothers will likely
raise illiterate and ineffective societies. Alternatively, literate
mothers will largely contribute to literate and effective societies.
In
December of 2005, Hidaya’s team in Pakistan conducted research to
determine the situation of females attending school in the district of
Shikarpur. The results of the research were alarming. It was identified
that approximately 2,500 girls enter into primary school each year, but
only 250 (or 10%) of those students continue on to graduate from the
12th grade. It was also discovered that three times more (approximately
7,500) such female students never even see a classroom in their lives,
due to a lack of schools for females in their small villages or because
their parents can’t even afford to send them to the first grade. This
situation has created an environment in which the literacy rate is below 3% for all females.
To
identify causes of the high number of dropouts, a brainstorming session
was held with female students from the 11th and 12th grades along with
teachers at the Government Girls College Shikarpur. One of the major
factors to this astounding problem was an even bigger problem –
poverty. Parents can’t afford even the essentials for survival, hence
they decide to keep girls at home and, if at all even possible, they
send only their sons to school.
Hidaya’s
team went further to start defining the project at hand by collecting
additional data. It was found that 10 – 30% of girls who attend school
can’t afford to continue after some time. Therefore, such students were
to be supported by meeting their needs on a monthly basis so they may
remain in class. Additional research proved that all the districts away from major cities show the same statistics.
For such students that never even see a school, it was decided that
their well being must be addressed at a later phase of the project.
In
early 2007, Hidaya’s Pakistan team submitted a formal proposal to the
headquarters with plans on how to tackle this major problem. The
proposal was approved, and the implementation of work was initiated.
These girls come from extremely poor families. Therefore, working with
their impoverished parents, Hidaya has launched a major initiative to
provide financial support for school-going girls allowing them to
continue with their education.
Just $6 per month
is enough to offer one student the opportunity to continue her
education and bring a remarkable change to her life . . . and in time,
many such cases can bring change to the society.
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