The context
According to recent UNICEF estimates, Pakistan has the second highest number of out-of-school children, with approximately 22.8 million children aged between 5 and 16 — equivalent to 44% of the total population in this age group — lacking access to education.
To address this challenge, Italian Friends of The Citizens Foundation OdV has been developing projects since 2010 in close collaboration with The Citizens Foundation (TCF) — a Pakistani NGO founded in 1995 that works on educational initiatives in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods of major cities and rural areas across Pakistan.
Currently, TCF represents the largest non-profit school network in Pakistan, with over 1,833 secular schools built and 13,000 women trained and employed as teachers and principals within these schools. Through these initiatives, the aim is not only to ensure access to education for girls and boys but also to promote women’s empowerment by creating employment opportunities in the education sector.
The project
The Aagahi – Illuminated Lives project, launched in 2005 by TCF, aims to promote the development of the communities where the organisation’s schools are located. Specifically, the project focuses on improving adult women’s literacy but also extends to girls over the age of 10 living in rural areas and the slums of major urban centres in Pakistan.
In addition to the 174,000 women already trained, with the support of Fondazione Marcegaglia, approximately 2,000 women and girls per year will be able to participate in functional literacy courses taught by TCF teachers.
The courses take place twice a year, from January to April and from September to December, each lasting a total of four months. During this period, participants learn to read and write in Urdu, as well as receive basic mathematics lessons.
