A local university student has received the Hamad bin Khalifa University award for best service organisation after creating a student-run group that has successfully overseen the education of underprivileged children in Pakistan through a wholly volunteer-led school.
Haroon Yasin is a freshman at Georgetown University and founded Akhuwat-e-Awam. The name in Persian means ‘Brotherhood of the People.’
The founding members of Akhuwat-e-Awam are students at the Georgetown and Carnegie-Mellon campuses in Education City. It soon became clear to them that opening their own primary school in a complex environment overseas required a committed and dedicated body to oversee administration, curriculum-related issues and any planning of future projects.
With the goal of meeting these needs, Yasin and 19 other Georgetown students started a campus service organisation of the same name to supervise Akhuwat-e-Awam’s ambitious plans to provide education centres in Pakistani communities where none previously existed.
“In Pakistan, in December 2011, we opened our first school,” said Yasin. “It is entirely student-led. So far we have educated 70 children at the primary level for over a year. The club at Georgetown handles all the administrative affairs of the school.”
The school provides books, notebooks, pencils and food to all children who enrol. The language of instruction is English. Following the success of the first school, the Georgetown club has found an additional location and secured the finances to open a second school this summer.
“We are recognised by the government of Pakistan as an official education institution,” added Yasin. “When we think the model can be duplicated easily, we will try to replicate at a very quick pace, perhaps every four or five months. This is essentially the work and purpose of the club at Georgetown,” he said.
During a successful pen pal campaign between the multinational club members at Georgetown and students at the Akhuwat-e-Awam school, historical realities reared their heads and a young student’s parents withdrew their child from the primary school due to the nationality of the student’s pen pal. The Georgetown club put the pen pal programme on hold to allow time to analyse the realities on the ground and to assess the challenges the school faces.
“When the first school opened, I wasn’t in Qatar. I had just finished my high school, and was on a gap year. The idea had been discussed in my close group of friends, but we had not had the entire plan mapped out since it seemed like such a difficult initiative to start and sustain,” said Yasin.
Children in the area were badly affected by poverty. Seeing this, Yasin and his friends had always wanted to set up an institution that would not only provide them English-medium education, which was out of reach for them, but also offer them medical aid and food, given that many of the children were anaemic.
The entrepreneurs got their most important breakthrough when they were able to raise QR780. The amount was immediately used to rent a building in the slum community, lay some carpets and put up blackboards in it, and buy some second-hand books for the children who were going to be enrolled.
“As the donations started rolling in, we decided to open the doors of the building to the community. On the first day we expected a total of around 30 children. However, more than a 100 walked in, with their parents in tow,” recalled the student.
As the school started getting media coverage, the volunteer team also increased in number. Students from universities and high schools joined, becoming makeshift teachers. At one time, the functional volunteer staff swelled to around 60 people.
It is now more than one and a half years since the first school started. A heartening aspect of the effort is that providing all these facilities to 70 children for a year cost only $2,800.
In Doha, Yasin put together another group that manages the school’s administrative needs while the rest of the volunteers in Pakistan manage the school and assist the teachers.
“It is certainly not easy keeping in constant touch with the collaborators in Pakistan. On many occasions, our responses have been delayed, or put into effect after a long period of time due to the slow nature of communication. This is what we’re looking to improve in the future,” admitted the student.
Some of the volunteers from Georgetown are in Pakistan. At one point, 80 to 90 volunteers in all were involved with the project. The group’s current goal is to spread the word and attract more volunteers. Their Facebook page has helped with this.
Following his experience so far, the award-winning student is willing to replicate the model elsewhere. The members of the club at Georgetown study the model of the school in weekly meetings with the goal of opening more such schools in other locations. A second school will open in Pakistan this summer.
“There are people in this club who have the ability to rapidly replicate this model in their hometowns and communities. If we can acquire and manage the relevant resources, the initiative can spread even faster,” Yasin said.
“We realised very early that it wasn’t the money that would keep us running in the long term, but the people,” he concluded.
