An update on the “gift of summer reading” bookdrive
Last summer we worked with donors in the Seattle area to collect books for the students at our Akri, Pakistan campus. Over 80 books were collected each containing a handwritten note from the donor explaining what the book meant to them and why they wanted to share it with our students. The library is one of the most popular parts of the Akri campus so the books made a tremendous impact on our students when they arrived in the late summer. Our partners, The Citizens Foundation (TCF), took some terrific pictures the day the books arrived and our students’ reactions when receiving them.
Unfortunately shortly after their delivery, heavy rains hit Akri, causing a levy to break and the school to be flooded. The ground floor of the school was immersed in 3 feet of water for several months and classes were suspended during this time. Many of our students’ families had to relocate to neighboring villages. Soon after the flooding, Umaimah had the opportunity to chat with some of our students to get their thoughts about receiving the books, what attending the school means to them and how the flooding impacted their lives.
Altaf,grade 3, dreams of becoming a computer engineer: [The books] we got were awesome. They are all at the school. Thank you [to the seattle kids] for sending us such great books. We hope you like the books we like and that we can someday send them to you. We had to rush out [with the flooding], we couldn’t take anything from home. They are saying it will rain again…we are staying in a school in Badin [a nearby town] and will not go home until it’s stopped raining. I love studying at the dreamfly school – it’s more fun than fun!
Noor-Ul-Huda, grade 4, dreams of becoming a doctor: Learning is so fun- we want to become something so we have to work hard. We loved getting [the books}. We read them. I love stories – all kinds of fun stories. Thank you to the kids in Seattle!
Fiza, grade 3, dreams of becoming a doctor and pharmacist: I want to be a doctor who can make her own medicine – yes, a doctor and a pharmacist. [At school she likes} drawing – water color; I participated in a school competition where our teacher asked us to paint whatever we like. I painted mickey mouse all from memory – I had seen mickey mouse somewhere and I “stamped” his picture in memory! I also do pencil color. I’ve painted grapes and all kinds of fruits. I once made a cotton snowman. A real one. Our teacher put it in the classroom but then it got old and dirty. My father is a writer, and I also write a column. I write poems in Sindhi, and once I’m done with Sindhi, I’ll write in Urdu and English also! I read “big” books – when I don’t understand something, I underline the words, and then go ask my father what they mean.
Sughra, grade 4, dreams of being a teacher: I love drawing on the computer and arts; I’ve made houses and bears. I really liked getting the books from Seattle. I like going to school and doing housework. I do help when I am not studying. I like sweeping and cleaning the house. I am telling the truth!
We are happy to report that the school has since re-opened and students are able to attend classes again. Extensive repairs are needed to get the dreamfly campus back to its original state and donations are being accepted through our site. Simply login to Paypal and note “Pakistan” in the cause section of the donation form.
The one thing the flood couldn’t touch was our students’ love for books and the library is still just as popular as ever. More than just bringing delight to our students, the book drive helped us to connect children in Pakistan with their well-wishers in the US and make strides against our mission for exposure and education. We’d like to thank two of our largest donors to the bookdrive, Rhys Dekle and Jeff Robinson. Without their help, we wouldn’t have been able to make such a wonderful gift to our students. We deeply appreciate their support and helping our book drive be a terrific success.
Stay tuned for more information on our fundraising efforts and how you can continue our students’ love for learning and books!
Deciding India’s Future
The Occupy Wall Street movement taking place globally is a clear expression of the frustration that you people are facing globally: too few jobs, too many degrees and a lack of direction. As India’s youth continue to grow, we need to take some lessons from the movement and plan accordingly.
Over sixty percent of the Indian population is under the age of twenty-five and within the next decade, India will have a sizable percent of the world’s young population. Our education, skills and employment policies today will inevitably impact global development tomorrow.
While the government has promised to improve academic standards through the introduction of tablets and an increasingly decentralized education system, it is civil society organizations that are ultimately going to make a significant dent in the space. Within education are two major types of players: the private institutes that target upper and middle-income households and the charitable institutes that target low-income households mostly with the support of external donor organizations.
Under the former category are organizations such as TeamLease. The for-profit vocational institute was started as a human resources firm that provided jobs in the retail and hospitality industry. The founder, Manish Sabharwal eventually saw prospect in the education industry, particularly in vocational education, and decided to expand the company’s work.
Consequently, TeamLease is now starting vocational training institutes in Gujarat to train and place individuals in the private sector. TeamLease has grown more than three times in the past ten years and its continued growth only speaks to market demand. However, Team Lease will only attract young people with certain skill level, exposure and family income.
For the majority, those in tier two and three towns, away from the glitz of the city, there are solid organizations such as dreamfly who are working to provide opportunity and exposure to young people. The mission of dreamfly is to work in communities in conflict by bringing together people from diverse backgrounds. In India they have found their niche in Ulubedia in West Bengal.
Ulubedia is a Muslim-dominated community with high unemployment rates and low literacy levels. In the midst of such depressing conditions, dreamfly has taken on the responsibility of building a computer lab where children from diverse backgrounds can come together and learn through technology.
By donating thirty-two Multipoint computers and two laptops, the organizations aims to encourage group-work and expose students to the world beyond Ulubedia. Dreamfly is a unique organization because they not only focus on improving the quality of education but also encouraging students to open their minds and be accepting of people from different faiths, castes and backgrounds. Thus, ensuring that youth are not only intelligent but also tolerant and civically oriented.
However, to ensure that students remain competitive, dreamfly will also be including Microsoft training program software that will provide older students the opportunity to be certified with the skills for entry-level data work. Dreamfly has worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan and now is expanding its reach to India and Rwanda.
On Wall Street and across the world we are seeing the fight against ‘the big’ come to life: big governments and big businesses. It is ironic that the protest is again the big when in fact there is a need to reconfigure the big with the support of the youth. As India continues to grow, young people will be the lifeline of this country. However, in order to ensure that we are adequately prepared we need to give the skills and training required so that we can empower youth and in turn empower the country.
You can follow me on twitter @rwitwika. Read more about our India project at http://www.thedreamfly.org/india-2/.
Announcing the launch of our online photobook – Daredreaming: On the Streets of Pakistan
We at dreamfly are thrilled to announce the launch of our online photobook Daredreaming: On the Streets of Pakistan.
Daredreaming on the Streets of Pakistan is a compilation of five stories of triumph and will – of children living in the slums of Karachi, the financial and commercial capital of Pakistan and home to over 15 million. Born into poverty and illiteracy, like millions across the country, Khalida, Zareena, Abid, Mumtaz, and Asif have all broken the mold and are on their way to unpredictably promising futures.
View their photos and stories at http://www.thedreamfly.org/daredreaming/.
Beautifully photographed by our own Umaimah Mendhro, the book was designed by Fareena Chanda with the online experience built by Phil Brondyke. Fiza Asar was also integral to creating this wonderful piece. We’d also like to thank The Citizens Foundation for their support in Pakistan.
Madhia Qureshi worked with Umaimah and Fiza to compile each of the 5 children’s stories in Pakistan and shares her wonderful experience below. We shop you will enjoy Daredreaming as much as we do – please share your thoughts with us through comments on our blog, on our Facebook page or through Twitter.
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When Fiza and Umaimah asked me to be a part of their photo book project almost four years ago, highlighting the stories of five extraordinary young men and women, I couldn’t say no. How could I, when throughout my time with the nonprofit The Citizens Foundation in Karachi, I had seen scores of similar children overcome similar odds, becoming young pioneers in their impoverished, neglected communities, and longed to tell their stories to a world that desperately needs stories like that. Stories of triumph and courage and hope need to be told in the world today. There has to be a counter to all the despondency and pessimism, especially that coming out of and being poured into my unfortunate homeland.
Update on our school in Akri, Pakistan
We are sad to report that earlier this month our school in Akri, Pakistan was flooded and will have to close for a few months. Heavy rains caused a breach in a nearby canal causing the entire village of Akri to be flooded. Our campus now has over four feet of water in it, with no way to drain the water. Many of our students and their families have relocated to Badin, a nearby town, living in make-shift camps until the water receeds.
We are in close contact with our partner, The Citizens Foundation, that manages our school operations to keep abreast of the rebuilding efforts. Their current estimate is that the campus will need to be closed for at least 2 months. We are determining what the best course of action for aiding in any reparation efforts and supporting our students. We will send updates with how you can get involved shortly.
The Power of Coffee: A Journey to a Coffee Washing Station in Rwanda
Cyangugu (also known as Rusizi) is located in the South Western corner of the country in the Western Province.
One of the coolest places we visited in Rwanda was a Village named Cyingwa in Rusizi District, near the Rwanda- Congo border. We flew to Kamembe Airport in Rusizi District from Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. The area was mostly mountainous – which made for beautiful scenery.
We went to Cyingwa to visit a Coffee Washing Station, where coffee is grown, cleaned, dried, and then shipped all of the over the world. However, we didn’t come to Cyingwa to just learn about how coffee is made.
The Coffee Washing Station is really an exercise in reconciliation! The Coffee Washing Station was setup so that Tutsi and Hutu, genocide survivors and perpetrators could live next to each other and work towards a common cause – a better future for their children and themselves. The Coffee Washing Station encourages people to put their differences aside and focus on cultivating coffee.
Coffee Processing facility - the blue bins in the distance store coffee as it washed. The long rows are drying facilities.
Pierre Munyura, along with Eugene Nyagahene one of the premier entrepreneurs of Rwanda, founded the Coffee Washing Station so that the members of Pierre’s home village could not only earn a living, but also live and work side by side after the horrors of the 1994 genocide. In fact one of the founding principles of the Coffee Washing Station was that it must employ both Hutu and Tutsi villagers.
The Coffee Washing Station provides jobs, funding for clean water and schools, and provides hope for a village that was destroyed after the genocide. In fact, a percentage of every pound of Coffee sold is guaranteed to be used to serve a social cause. This year the focus is on clean water.
The children and parents in village were inspiring as well. They were extremely optimistic about their future and were willing to work to make it real.
Children in Cyingwa being asked if they want to go to Secondary School.
Pierre was gracious enough to escort us to the Coffee Washing Station and give us a personal tour. Along the way Pierre shared with us his personal motivations for starting the Coffee Washing Station after his home village was devastated by the genocide. Even though Pierre was not living in the village at the time, Pierre felt a personal responsibility to ensure that his village came together again and survived.
The Coffee Washing Station employs over a 150 villagers during peak harvest season and produces over 50 tons of coffee a year.
Pierre and Eugene’s coffee business serve as an example of how a for profit enterprise can have a significant positive impact on a community. Their accomplishments serve as an example to social entrepreneurs everywhere.
A note from Pierre about the Coffee business:
I’ll never look at a cup of coffee the same way again!