Education

Corporate partner views Trust at work

Shalini Khemka, Investment Director at LDC (Lloyds Development Capital) and CEO of The London Entrepreneurial Exchange, visited Mumbai Mobile Crèches (MMC) recently where she witnessed the inspiring work of our charity partner.

Over 50,000 children of migrant construction workers live on building sites in Mumbai. MMC runs day care centres providing health and education services on the sites themselves. Since 1972 MMC has reached out to more than 150,000 children who would otherwise be left to wander on the dangerous sites while their parents worked.

Mumbai Mobile Crèches also trains women from migrant communities to become teachers so that they can run centres themselves. MMC aims to be a demonstration model of quality childcare for construction sites across India. Continue reading Corporate partner views Trust at work…

CHARITY: Developments in Literacy

Dhani Bux and Gul Muhammed admit to having tried everything to close the new school for girls operated by Developments in Literacy (DIL) in the rural community of Jaanvery Got in Pakistan. A year later, these two village heads sit on the education committee and encourage other parents to send their daughters to school. “We were nervous, we felt tradition would be broken,” they said at the time. “We have never educated our girls, why start now?”

They demanded that DIL head teacher Farazana Sial shut the school and leave. Although she had been humiliated and threatened for trying to explain the benefits of education to the community, Farazana Sial persevered and eventually won over the two men. 

“We saw the way the girls who were getting educated conducted themselves with dignity, they could read and write and help their farmer fathers calculate earnings,” Dhani Bux said. “We had been caught in an age of ignorance,” he admitted.

DIL’s success in Jaanvery Got is just one example of how the charity supported by The British Asian Trust is winning over rural communities in its campaign to provide education for girls. Over 15,000 students, primarily girls, are enrolled in 149 Development in Literacy supported primary and secondary schools in rural areas across Pakistan.

Story and photo by Fatima Njam of Creatives Against Poverty