from the annual report 2006 . . .

How did we start…?

The Story of Bint-e-Malakand

We joined Malakand social forestry Project (funded by Royal Netherlands Embassy and government of NWFP, Pakistan ) in 1987 as local female extension workers for working Malakand, where the project started its operations. We continued in this project until it winded up in 1999 and we retired as female coordinators for Dir and Malakand. One of us relatively comes from poor family and hence has closer and first hand knowledge of sources of poverty and vulnerability in the area.

Both of us, being from Malakand and from the villages, were aware of the malpractices going on in our feudal system. One of the most painful practices was to engage little girls as servants at homes with nominal or no remuneration. This often happened to the girls whose parents were tenants / servants with the feudal lord or they were indebted to him due to their eminent poverty! We know that there were many schools established by the government in a decade time, but most of them were inaccessible to the children from poorest families. Government schools reported a high dropout rate for several reasons… one of course was poverty… many could not afford to buy basic material that children would need in the school. Moreover, these children acted as a tradeoff for the debts their parents would receive. In a rural society where the boys were lucky ones, and whose education was more important as they would feed the parents once they grow old, girls were easy to be pulled back from the schools and engaged in the farms with the parents or sent to Khan’s Kor for serving his wife and baby sit their Kids. Nobody would know that other services they were asked to provide… We knew that young girls were also abused in some families as no one could provide them safety.

We chose a candle for our logo! Candle is source of light. In our religion and culture, light is symbolized for a source of knowledge. Knowledge is light that brightens people’s minds! When a candle is lit, it spreads light to defeat the dark. Similarly, knowledge defeats the ignorance and injustice!

The situation was complex apparently and very hard to intervene… yet we thought and thought about it. Finally on the basis of our field experience with the Pak-Holland project, we recollected all of our confidence and decided to make a little initiative. We lit a candle called Bint-e-Malakand Welfare Organization! We started off in the villages where we felt most accepted and comfortable. We went door to door to all rich and poor and gathered their ideas on whether engaging little girls in various chores without their will was a right thing to do. We found that the poor families knew that it was not but often there was no choice. In rich and feudal class, we found a general acceptance of the fact that it was not fair. Generally, these people were respected in the villages… they were the feudal lords but they were not criminal in their nature (of course some would act as dictators or king of their villages, which is a hard reality). Therefore, in order to keep this image in the village they too promised for providing their support. For us communication was rather easier as we were born and raised in this culture where elders were highly respected and their decision were regarded as important. We avoided confrontation approach and furthered our agenda through the people who were actually “exploiters”.

We initiated five schools in a few years with our own resources. We set a rather formal education method with quite an informal touch. We established linkages with local teachers serving in various government schools. We also brought on board senior female officers serving in education department at local level. We selected teachers from the villages in order to avoid what happens to the government schools in rural areas, a nice building but no teacher wants to be posted in remote area. These teachers were educated jobless girls who did not want to adapt a profession demanding a lot of mobility outside their villages, as they were not permitted to do so. They happily accepted these jobs with little remuneration as they could run these schools either at their homes or in nearby rented house. Girls started coming to schools, but the question was who would then earn and pay the debts? Their mothers were organized in the Mother’s Associations. The agenda was to train them in various income-generating skills. This would help them earn extra income and do whatever they wanted to do with the money. Girls on the other hand were enjoying their classrooms and NGO was taking care of their schooling needs. It was a clear trade-off! That is why we say that enterprise development components in the NGO activities act as a nerve to achieve the mission.

We were not alone in this entire journey, many local women joined us as local members. They included teachers, health workers, community activists, masons, women farmers and many others. Philanthropists’ men and women also gradually joined us in and outside Malakand, even abroad in Holland and Switzerland who gave us all sorts of moral courage, intellectual and material support. For us, field work and working with rural women was our daily bread. However we were not as educated to make for ourselves sound linkages outside our area with Donors and NGO’s. Writing good documents, project proposals, etc. was not that much easy for us. Our supporters helped us in these areas. We will like to mention only some of these…

We had informal support from our Dutch advisors in our project where we worked for more than twelve years. We had a Pakistani advisor, Ms. Arjumand Nizami , who once found out our work and saw our school in the field, never then left us alone. She and her family were at very step with her in supporting her and our NGO in all possible ways. Through them we met many others who supported us. Dr. Henry Suter (ex Delegate IC Pakistan) and his wife gave us moral encouragement and advices that helped us a lot in our work. They also provided material support on their own which we recognized very well. Mr. Jan Taal from school Voor Imaginatie Netherlands not only personally supported us but also mobilized other to come forward and help us. We received financial assistance from Mr. Theo Schuurman and his wife Marian Schuurman this year and from the Kermesse Francophone, The Hague, Netherlands . Frans Werter, our old colleague from social forestry project also came forward to provide similar assistance. He was joined by another colleague from our Social Forestry Project times Ms. Bertken de Leede in Holland . It is important to mention that for us the quantum of material support is less important than the moral courage we receive through such actions!!

Now since we have left the project jobs, we are thoroughly devoted and engaged in serving our NGO. We are trying to establish three more schools. In this journey now we have received little financial assistance from Swiss Development Coopertion-Intercooperation (SDC-IC) Pakistan , Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Islamabad , and Strengthening Participatory Organizations (SPO) Peshawar and many individual sponsors under child sponsorship programme!! We have in the last two years other supporters. Innovation for Poverty Reduction project of IC, ICIMOD Nepal, UNDP Tropical Forestry Programme, Gender Equality Programme of DFID and CIRCLE Winrock International Nepal. Our self-confidence and motivation is now very high. We are not nervous on how little we have done so far in numbers. For us it is more important to sustain what we have established so far and carefully upscale. Thank you all very much for your support and we look forward to your further support in future too! Pray for us!

 

Fouzia Bibi                   Bibi Fatima

 

 

THE YEAR 2005 - 2006

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MAIN ACTIVITIES

 

•  School Programme:

From five schools now we have Nine schools in nine different villages (First Labor Children Schools) continued successfully with a total enrollment this year reaching at 622. Ten management committees continued their activities with total number of 200 members. Seven schools building are rented and two schools are running in Teachers houses. The total rents of these seven building monthly cost Rs 3550.

 

List of schools at present

S NO	Name Village	Schools Name
1	Dihry Alladand (1998)	First Labour Children School Dihry Alladand
2	Gharibabad Batkhela (2004)	First Labour Children School Batkhela
3	Khar (2004)	First Labour School Khar.
4	Matkanai (1998)	First Labour School Matkanai
5	Haryan Kot (1998)	First Labour Children School Haryankot
6	Brah (2004)	First Labour Children School Brah
7	Kot Mina (1998)	First Labour children School Kot Mina
8	Bazdara (1998)	First Labour Children School Bazdara
9	Hassianabad Banda Dargai (2006)	First labor children school Hasanabad Banda

 

List of Teacher working In Bint-e Malakand Schools

1	Miss Samina Bibi	First Labour Children School Dihry Alladand
2	Seema Bibi	-Do-
3	Shazia Bibi	-Do-
4	Rehana Bibi	First Labor Children School Batkhela
5	Fehmeeda Bibi	-Do-
6	Kulsom Bibi	First Labor Children School Khar
7	Salma Bibi	-Do-
8	Abgina Bibi	First Labor children School Matkanai
9	Shafqut Bibi	-Do-
10	Saima Bibi	-Do-
11	Naila Bibi	First Labor Children School Haryan Kot
12	Dil Naz	First Labor Children School Brah
13	Naheed Akhter	First labor Children School Kot Mina
14	Afsha Noreen	First Labor Children School Bazdara

 

•  Mother’s Associations:

Nine Mother’s Association Continued their activities with total number of members reaching at 200, Saving programme could not continues successfully because of some reasons. The NRSP and MRDP started the saving Programme in these villages also they started credit programme with 22% interest in some villages. The religious leaders protested in their speeches the effect of the interest in Islamic religions and communities stopped cooperating in saving. For this programme the community need more motivation and awareness. So the NGO will try to continue. A number of income generation activities were also introduced and were partially successful. A need for much improved marketing strategy was felt so it was conducted during the ESDP project for identifying innovative income generation skills in saturated local market. Mother association will market their products and earn income.

 

•  Coaching Centers:

Coaching centers for teachers’ assistance continued in senior members’ homes. The senior retired teachers were kind to help young teachers of the schools to facilitate them in subjects like mathematics and English. These centers are also supposed to play as centers for adult literacy which practically did not happen on regular basis for resource limitation. However, the coaching centers provided ample support in organizing income generation training for women. In 2006 these centers did not function so actively because of financial limitations.

 

•  Asher Plantation :

Asher is a local term referring to a collective / joint action organized by villagers on one of the inhabitants land for his / her assistance on volunteer basis. The Asher concept comes from joint land preparation or harvesting activities in agriculture. The students organized Asher plantation in six villages. They participated in this activity enthusiastically.

 

•  Fund Raising Campaign

The NGO arranged fund raising campaign in Feb 2006 full month. First we purchased plants from mothers associations nurseries and after that the NGO staff sold these plants in different villages and raised fund 20000 Rs., through this way the NGO have helped the Mothers in marketing also mothers, schools children and NGO staff and common villagers took a lot of interest in the activity.

 

•  Pakistan ’s Independence Day:

14 th August was celebrated in Nine villages. Nine respective schools organized the day whiten their schools. The activity was very controlled and attracted a lot of interest from the children and their families. The mothers of the children and women organization of the villages are also participated, from the education deportment female ADO miss humira and Kifayat was were participated in nearest schools. Local Govt teachers were attended in all nine schools in some villages Union councilors were also participated,

 

•  Staff Training:

This year the NGO staff participated in training on project proposal development. Gender Empowerment Programme (GEP) arranged this training. Another training was organized for teachers in advance teaching methods. Government teachers’ training institute Peshawar offered the training. Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO) Peshawar organize Development Planning Management workshop in Batkhaila in which NGO staff was also invited. These events were highly useful for the staff. During literacy programme running by Govt

 

•  Training for Community Members:

A number of trainings were organized by the NGO for women. The training included income generation activities such as candle making (55), tie and die training for fabric dying (50), detergent making (75), basket making (25), mushroom cultivation (45), pickle making (68), health care (50), seed collection (40), natural honey collection (30), record keeping (10), squash making (34) and food processing (30). One training held on kitting for one month (30). Post harvesting training on medicinal plants 2 held (15 male, 15 female). Bee keeping training (30 male and 30 female). Enterprise development training 3 held (10 male 30 female) at field level and 3 held at office level (10 male 20 female).

THE ENROLLMENT RECORD

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The enrolment chart of nine schools in 2006 is given in the following table:

 

First of the First Labor Children Schools in Malakand Agency

Under the Bint-e-Malakand

 

S#	Name of School	Village name	No of Classes	Nursery	KG 1	KG 2	KG 3	KG 4	KG 5	Total
1	First Labor Children School Diary Alladand	Dhairy Alladand	6	30	25	20	10	15	25	125
2	First Labor Children School Matkanai	Matkanai	6	30	25	18	18	15	25	131
3	First Labor Children School Batkhela	Batkhela	2	20	25					45
4	First Labor Children School Khar	Khar	2	20	42					62
5	First Labor Children School Bazdara	Bazdara	3	10	12	15				37
6	First Labor Children School Haryankot	Haryankot	6	20	16	15	10	9	30	100
7	First Labor Children School Kot Mena	Kot Mena	2	20	25					45
8	First Labor Children School Brah	Brah	2	20	37					57
9	First Labor Children School Dargai	Dargai	1	20						20
	Total									622

 

 

 

 

THE NGO’s INTRODUCTION PACKAGE

A CD was prepared with detailed introduction of the NGO and its strategy in 2004. Website of BMWO has been launched and can be visited at www.bintemalakand.org this was developed by voluntary support by Solutions Unlimited Peshawar.