6. Education:

Give me educated mothers and I will give you a strong nation.(NB)

Education is a harbinger in the realization of a dream of progressive society. A society where there is tolerance, respect for one-another and regard for human and women rights. Education, which addresses these issues, is to be called a qualitative education for which SWWS is striving for. 

6.1 Formation and training of Parent Teacher Association:

SWWS has started a Programme to form 50 Parents Teachers Associations (female PTA) in Swabi with financial support of Primary Education Program NWFP, in order to promote the quality of education, increase enrolment in schools and involve the local communities to support/monitor education activities. The formation of PTAs has yielded significant results. Training sessions were organized for PTAs to improve their capacities in record keeping, organize meetings, coordinate with local education authorities, monitor and supervise school management and in resource mobilization.

After fulfilling their training needs, proper banks accounts were opened in the local schedule Banks with the joint signatures of head teacher and PTA president. 50 PTAs were registered with education department to streamline the PTAs to get financial benefit and other governmental support. 150 special events were organized in each community in which hundreds of women participated and got informed/ educated regarding the importance of female education.

6.2 Urban Working and Indigent Children (UWIC) Education project:

UWIC is the third component of Ammal project under which SWWS is running ten community based schools (CBS) for indigent and working children of Mardan City. This is the join venture of Department for International Development/UK (DFID) and Frontier Education Foundation (FEF).

About 668 children (both male and female) are studying in these schools. Through this project SWWS has involved mothers in the process of organizing sustainable, good quality education for their daughters in their localities. This is the multipurpose project and besides education the other objectives are,

� Provide basic and vocational related education to working and indigent children including scavengers and beggars.

� To minimize health hazards for working children through health education and health screening. To educate and save the from health hazards according to the nature of work they are involved in.

� To adopt multi-partnership approach involving community, employers and parents/guardian of working children.

� To strengthen government/private sector partnership for promotion of basic education.

� To help working children to join either the mainstream of education or of their trade

� To use the project for social mobilization and advocacy tool against child labour.

� To make them capable of learning various skills of their choice.

� To cause awareness amongst them, their parents and employers of child rights.

� To impart awareness of and strategies to avoid child abuse and sexual assaults.

� To educate the children about their rights.

Achievements

1 Survey of the target area was completed to identify the location with high concentration of working children and indigent children,

2 Pre-implementation workshop was held with local partners.

3 10 CBS (7 boys+3girls) have been established with 668 working and indigent children presently enrolled as regular students.

4 A series of Teachers Training (TT) and Training of Teachers Trainers (TOTT) has been completed to improve and maintain quality teaching learning process in the CBS.

5 The eligible CBS teachers were being provided with a DFID funded scholarship to complete the PTC courses through AIOU this year.

6 14 School management committees (SMC) have been organized with 284 membership including 160 male and 81 female.

7 All SMC completed first and second phase of training regarding CBS management, supervision and development.

8 Health screening of all students in the CBS has been completed and proposal for further support is under process.

9 Awareness raising and motivation material including posters, brochures on different themes related to working and indigent children were processed and available to be used for awareness raising campaigns.

10 Eight trip of students exposure visits to different schools and park were arranged.

11 The local organization was formed to hand over Ammal project (UWIC) at the end of the project.

12 The process of school improvement plan was shared with each and every SMC.

13 4 Schools were handed over to local employers associations, 6 schools are currently funded by FROK.

6.3 Universal Primary Education Project

SWWS in collaboration with National Commission for Human development is running a Universal Education Program in the target area of Tehsil takht Bhai district Mardan. The two parties came under an agreement initially for a quarter i.e., from August to October 2003 and was continued to July 2004. 

6.3.1 Feeder School/Teacher

Feeder schools/ teacher is one of the activities, which are regularly carried out in field and through which the Social Organizers have a close link with a community. There are 34 feeder teachers and 9 feeder Schools in target area of SWWS for the target group age of 5-7 years.

Gender wise Distribution

Male Teacher based Schools are 6 in which 234 children are getting education. While 3 schools are female teacher based in which 108 children are getting education. Total 26 feeder teachers were provided to government Boys Primary Schools, whereby 1351 children are enrolled with these teachers. In Government Girls Primary Schools 8 feeder teachers were being inducted to support the regular teachers and total 502 students were enrolled.

6.3.2 Data Re-Verification Survey

This data was previously collected in all 74 Union Councils of district Mardan in 2002. However, due to the reasons as lack of proper follow up and monitoring during the survey, free services of teachers and volunteers, taken for granted and other reasons, round about 40% error was noticed in post monitoring and verification. To eradicate this error a re-verification round was started in August 2003. At that time SWWS signed an agreement with HDSU Mardan. The re-verification survey is the first ever activity for SWWS, initiated at Tehsil Takht Bhai.

6.3.3 Non Formal Basic Education Centers/ Adult Literacy centers NFBECs/ALCs

At the time of Agreement with NCHD, total 27 centers were found in running condition. While the centers opened were 29 in which two centers were closed immediately after its initiation and one center afterwards closed due to the problematic nature of teacher. A total number of 535 were present during the first visit made to these centers by NCE team.

6.3.4 Physical Infrastructure Schemes under

Until now a total 12 schemes have so far been completed in five Union councils for clean drinking water in Takhat bai area. 

7. Micro and Small Scale Enterprises

During the days of CBD project in 1995 the female staff outreached to sixty-six villages of district Swabi. This experience left many footprints on future strategy of SWWS as they came across to many soul-searching issues regarding women status. Some of the key findings were;

� Patriarchal structure characterized by sharp inequalities in economic autonomy and power of man and women;

� Women�s lack of mobility;

� Lack of access to resources; and

� Lack of decision making powers.

The dismal situation of women�s status demanded action that could directly address the gender discrimination in a highly conservative area of Pakistan. SWWS stared equipping herself for the challenge and the first step was setting up of skill training units on small scale in individual houses within communities in 1995. Women of the rural areas showed their overwhelmingly enthusiasm in these activities which was encouraging. Slowly and gradually the small initiative became the foundation of the Micro and small scale enterprise development programme for women started in 1997. In March 1998 SNPO (now CHIP) supported a TOT for SWWS, which was facilitated by HRMDC, and had thirteen women staff from SWWS. As a result, they facilitate previously trained entrepreneurs to get loan from the First Women Bank, albeit with great difficulty. With the increasing in capacity the interest in ED was on the rise which was catalyzed by CHIP by approving enterprise developing training project for the period January 1999 to June 2001. About 92 women were trained under that project. Since September 2002 Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) also facilitated conducted various training for SWWS staff regarding enterprise development social mobilization.

For poverty alleviation we broadened our area of operation to male member of community in June 2002 with support of CHIP. Now under the umbrella of EDP, SWWS is imparting two kinds of training. One is Enterprise development training and the other is skill-development training both for male and female, followed by CMST, LMST and BMST courses at field level.

Specific Objectives

For enterprise development program SWWS aims to contribute the poor community in poverty alleviation through market-oriented employment, self-employment and income generation in a sustainable way. However following are the specific objectives for micro-enterprise development program.

• To promote micro-enterprise in District Swabi

• To enable the existing and potential entrepreneurs to take full responsibility of their business action and to learn to invest for their own development.

•  To enable potential entrepreneurs to take initiative in establishing and enhancing small businesses.

• To build up entrepreneurial skill level of existing and potential women and men entrepreneurs through training.
•  To encourage small-scale enterprises and facilitate trainees in establishing of links with market and financial institutions.

SWWS hold that money is an important factor in poverty alleviation but not the sole agent, which can bring change. Efficiency of an organization can not be judged from the amount of credit disbursed and recovered. It is the actual change that has been brought in the lives of the poor. Under EDP the potential community member are trained in different techniques of entrepreneurs and they are provided with market exposure visits. They are mobilized to start business on small scale. Those who want to start business are equipped with all kinds of necessary themes required for enterprise.