Reversing the Tragedies of the Pristine Valleys: The Revolutionary Walk, Taking a Child to School in Swat, Pakistan
Today, Swat is hardly known for its breathtaking landscape. Instead it makes headlines for a violent insurgency and bans on girls’ education.
Rebuilding Swat is a monumental task. The British Council has been working on the ground since 2014 through its ILMPOSSIBLE – Take a Child to School (TACS) programme to encourage school enrolment and retention by training youth volunteers and mobilising community leaders.
To date ILMPOSSIBLE has enrolled approximately 105,000 out of school children across 60 districts in Pakistan. The initiative is a US$4.25 million joint project with the Qatar-based Educate A Child programme, aiming to enrol 135,000 children between the ages of five and 11 into primary school and ensure their retention through the three-year cycle.
In spite of the serious challenges present in the project’s districts and in Swat in particular, trained volunteers continue to enrol children into primary schools there. Special grants were awarded to under-resourced schools through which Mohalla Committees (district-level leaders and activists who support TACS) constructed additional classrooms. Previously, these school did not have adequate space to accommodate their school populations, and students often sat outside to attend class.
Approximately 25km north of Kabal is Godden, a small village with few modern facilities. This is where eight-year-old Pass Bibi lives. Her mother works in the house of a local landlord, earning US$9.50 per month.
An ILMPOSSIBLE volunteer saw Pass one morning and spoke to her. He asked what she wanted to do, and she pointed to children walking to school saying, “I want to go where they are going.”
The volunteer involved the local school committee when Pass Bibi’s parents appeared reluctant to enrol her. Poverty, the parents said, would simply not allow them to send their daughter to school. The committee met several times with the parents before they agreed. To help with the costs, the committee provided Pass with a uniform and some school supplies. She is now in class one – her first step to a brighter future.
Swat has a long road ahead, but small kernels of hope are growing where once the doors to opportunity were closed. When Ilm, the Urdu word for ‘education’, is accessible, all things are possible.
