Another story from Pakistan

To be fair to my readers I must admit I read about the Edhi Foundation and visited The Citizens Foundation.

Unjela and Saad took me to the new headquarters of the Citizens Foundation and together with its founder Mushtaq Chhapra – gentleman in the picture who is actually a successful business man during the day – we went to visit a new school foundation recently opened in a suburb of Karachi.

Apologies, I don’t remember the exact location but it was right behind the middle-upper class neighbour where senior military officers retire building their nice cosy villas. My readers will help me with the exact geographic coordinations.

As you can see in the picture the school is right in front of where very poor families live so the kids have a safe and clean place to go. Their parents work as servants in the posh neighborhood nearby when they do a have a job.

I was struk by the contrast between the school and its sorroundings. Everything looked dirty and polluted outside the gate – garbage was everywhere – but it was the opposite as I stepped in the courtyard of the school. It was spacious,  clean, tidy as you would expect anywhere else in the west where pupils dwell. The school offers first class education even if the kids come from the poorest families in town. This is not just charity but society welfare.

In the words of its funder ‘Primary education is the first brick to rebuild society’. In one of the youngest countries in the world he must be right.

M Chhapra wants to create 1000 schools for the country. Actually, the foundation runs 700 schools across the country educating 800’000 children and employing 8000 people, especially women. Parents are less likely to send their daughters to school if the teacher is a man.

The foundation doen’t get a rupee from government but relys entirely on charitable donations. Every child pays a fee which is 1/10 of the actual cost: 1$ out of 10$. The rest is coverd by donations coming from individuals either resident in Pakistan or from abroad – the Pakistani diaspora.

I was surpised by the efficiency and professionality of the senior staff considering they rely on private donations not instituional donors. Once again my assumptions were defeated by reality.

The cherry on the cake came when we talked about policy, my favourite course. All the top management is well aware that the foundation has to come to terms with goverment sooner or later. Actually they want a partnership with government in their terms introducing the foundation’s curriculum in all the state school in the country. This is vision!

I didn’t mention this case in my previous blog because it wouldn’t really fit in Europe. The context is different.There are many other stories from Pakistan that might not be applicable to the European context but are inspiring. Valeriano sent me the web-link MatthewAlberto with other cases of Pakistani social enterprises and, today, Saad put me in touch with the Ladies Fund. The country is well supplied with social entrepreneurs and social activists.

However, even the Citizens Foundation comes in handy for my work in Europe. I’m planning to use it as a case-study in a key-note speech on developing social business for the Bottom of the Pyramid I’ve been invited to give at IE Business School. Rachida, scholar at the business school, reads my blog!