Illiteracy: A Curse

True happiness comes only by making others’ happy 

Syeda Mahnoor Ali (BS-6^TH, GPP)

Education is the 4th SDG devised by the UN to prosper quality education all over the world. Pakistan being a developing country lacks in resources to provide literacy to its residents and in this regard, importance of literacy is also invisible. Thus we have initiated this project to highlight the reasons, causes and also deliver some solutions for it. We have chosen the name ‘URAAN’ for this project because it will be easier for the slum residents to understand our concept. Uraan is a project initiated by a group of undergrad students from GPP department of NUML, who aim to contribute in betterment of our society through educating children living in slums situated in urban areas of Islamabad.

Our team is passionate and determined to increase literacy rate in the country and spread awareness. Uraan is just a start of the path to achieving this goal. We have yet to pin down three urban slums locations where our team can begin the journey of educating the underprivileged children. The target is to increase their living standard in the long term. Lack of education in Pakistan is not an unknown topic but we, as a group decided to focus on the education of underprivileged children. (According to the Business Recorder) this project is very important because the percentage of people under poverty in Pakistan is predicted to jump to 40% by the end of 2020.

Pakistan is a country where there are many other socio economic issues such as poverty, health etc. so education is not given much Prominence. Islamabad city has 1 million populations, of which 379,620 (38%) lives in slums. 3% residents of slums are temporarily displaced or migrants from other parts of the country while 8% belong to other Nationalities. Education in Pakistan is provided in public or private institutes at large. Many slum residents prefer their kids to work rather than study in public schools due to their low quality education and private schools are mostly too expensive for poverty stricken, underprivileged slum residents.

Poverty and illiteracy can drown a society and never be dealt with if people are not made aware regarding the importance of education. Education awareness campaign must be conducted to the parents of the underprivileged children as Understanding the concept of education can bring a vast change in the community. Master Ayyub slum school in f7 is a well-known recruit but it has not been replicated yet. Most slum children only know their local languages so we also intend to open up a course of English and Urdu languages in one of the slum areas.

Social action projects are a great way to get to know the society better and how we can be of any help to the underprivileged people. We consider ourselves lucky to have been chosen to give back to society in any way we could. Uraan was a project to actually highlight and understand the issues faced by underprivileged children, especially the ones living in slum areas of Islamabad. We can say that after conducting the research, we have come to a conclusion that slum people are not a fan of education due to three main reasons: firstly, they cannot afford sending their kids to school because it has an adverse effect on their skills improvement. Many people prefer that their kids learn a new skill such as cooking, cutting hair, electronics etc. rather than going to school. Secondly, the public/ government schools in Islamabad prefer middle class or privileged families over the families living in slums considering the situation of population in Pakistan. Thirdly, many girls are married off to the best suitors at very young ages due to lack of security in slums. Slums are made up of illegal residential area where people live in houses made of cloth that do not even contain a proper door so it is considered very unsafe for growing women to live their alone.

Even though after considering these issues, there was no way we could deny their concerns but it was important for them to know the importance of education and how they can improve their living conditions by just making an effort in enabling their kids with education. Education alone is not an issue, because we had to consider and acknowledge gender equality with it as well. Awareness sessions were held and are being held, to make this project sustainable regarding the cultural and societal change in community that promotes women rights as well as their liberty to acquire education without any hurdles. We hope to see our thoughts turn into actions soon with success. We look forward to your support as it is our social responsibility to put effort into making lives for those in need easier, by sharing our knowledge and skills along the way.