A Free School for Pakistani Girls

"Aliza Brohi is doing her bit to try and change this"

24-year-old Aliza Brohi started teaching four years ago.  At first, it was the children of her family’s maids, drivers and nannies.

The work goes out and the number of children turning up started to go.

Now she runs this free school “Saving the Future” for over hundred girls between the age of 5 and 15.

The school is located in the Eido Goth Village in Pakistan’s Sindh Province.

But it was hard at first to convince parents to send their daughters to her.

“If someone is providing free education to girls they suspect something might be wrong there, so the 25 girls who came in the beginning to learn stopped coming.”

Sugra Bibi has two daughters at the school. She says there were lots of rumours...

“People in our village say children will get lost here, that someone will kidnap them. I don’t trust them. But I told my husband that I want education for my children. And I’m not going to stop them coming here.”

To help convince people to send their children to the school, Aliza asked the help of elder Mai Maryam.

“I told them everything is free here. We went door to door with Aliza. And now thank God there are so many children studying here.”

10-year-old student Shaheen was not going to school before because her parents couldn’t afford it.

“The staff and environment here is great. I want to learn more and become a police inspector.”

In a traditional Pakistani society, girls’ education is not encouraged. In rural areas, girls are often married off below the age of 15.  Less than 3 percent of women in Pakistan have access to higher education.

And after primary school female enrolment drops dramatically.

Funds to set up the school first came from Aliza’s father.  Abdul Razak was the former director of the country’s biggest state-owned steel mills.

“I’ve seen in my village, women are in a very weak state. The people there consider themselves proud and brave. But I ask them, who are you born out from? So I tell them to respect and love the daughters like they do with sons. These little girls are going to become mothers of the nation.”

Aliza also started a fund raising campaign on social media.

One of the helping hands is Deputy Country Director at Center for International Private Enterprise, Hammad Siddiqui.

“90 plus girls are sponsored through various social media campaigns that we’ve been running. The beauty of all this is that there are people whom we have never met, we don’t know them, but it’s such a noble cause that they came forward and donated.”

For Aliza, building self-confidence for these young girls is her top priority.

“We want to groom them. Many of them before joining the school were on the street begging, working as domestic servants or just playing on the streets all the time. They were exposed to all sorts of abuses. We want to provide them with good environment and make them believe they can have a bright future unlike their poor parents.”

• Pakistan
• free school
• girl education
• Aliza Brohi
• Shadi Khan Saif