Pakistan's Educator Madonna Wants You To Know

Her name is Humaira Bachal. At age 12, she began teaching friends after school in the slums of Karachi. At age 13, she made a formal classroom outside her home by installing a chalkboard to teach other children who could not attend school at the end of her own school day. By age 16, she founded a school with four younger female colleagues (her sister and three friends) in a run-down building with “dirt, water and mud all around [where] all we had was… two rooms with bare walls.” By age 21, in the same slums she now had a school with 1,200 students where her 18 year-old sister Tahira was school principal. Two documentary filmmakers and some reporters found her and documented her story. Then the second documentarist became an Academy and Emmy Award winner. The Academy Award winning filmaker later introduced Ms. Bachal to Madonna. At 25, Ms. Bachal was on stage with Madonna at a concert for women's rights during which Madonna promoted raising money for Ms. Bachal's Dream Foundation Trust to build her a better school. In late September this year, at age 27, Humaira Bachal opened the new building of her Dream Model Street School.

To put in context the challenge Ms. Bachal overcame simply to become educated in Pakistan’s slums (never mind becoming a leading education advocate), about 40% of girls and 20% of boys grow up illiterate in Pakistan today according to UNICEF. Consider further that according to the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Rankings Pakistan ranks 141^st out of 142 countries ranked, only finishing ahead of Yemen while behind Nigeria (118^th), Saudia Arabia (130^th) and Iran (137^th).

In multiple documentaries, Ms. Bachal’s mother Zainab has discussed how Ms. Bachal’s father physically beat her because she allowed young Humaira to continue going to school in 9^th grade and hid the fact from him (the beating came when he found out). On film in her earlier days, one of Ms. Bachal’s own brothers has said that after seeing what was going on at Ms. Bachal’s school, he would not allow any of his own daughters to attend his sister's or any non-religious school; he would only allow his daughters religious education, “I will never get my daughters into school except for some basic Islamic teaching. For my son’s education, I am willing to even beg in the streets.”

Ms. Bachal’s school still teaches 4 shifts per day from 8am until 10pm as it has done for the past 7 years to maximize capacity (except when it taught 5 shifts per day): separate morning and afternoon shifts of school-age students; an early evening shift for young girls and women; and a later evening shift for working boys and adults. Ms. Bachal admits she only sleeps about 5 hours a day. Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, the Academy Award winning filmmaker and CEO of SOC Films, that has featured Ms. Bachal in three different documentary films says of Ms. Bachal’s drive:

As a filmmaker, in your career, you are lucky if you come across someone who shatters all your stereotypes: who they are, where they come from and what they do. One such person is Humaira. She is unstoppable. Clear about her goal and focused in its pursuit, she fought for her right to an education, and is now fighting for the rights of others. Her story gives me hope for Pakistan, and her courage and resilience bolsters and reminds me of the fact that there is still an insurmountable amount of good in this world, and it must be protected and celebrated.

I met Humaira when owning a proper school building was just a dream [for her]. I followed her [and witnessed her] take that dream on stage with Madonna at the Chime for Change concert. Just one year after that day, through crowdfunding, she built a state of the art school that now provides quality education to children who would have otherwise slipped through the cracks.

Ms. Bachal today is President of the Dream Foundation Trust which receives a range of support from individuals through crowdfunding to support from Madonna’s Ray of Light Foundation.

Story of the school in her words

Ms. Bachal's Dream Street Model School has also been at times called the Moach Goth Replication School signifying the slum where the school is located (Moach Goth) and the support of the Rotary Club of Karachi from 2007 until 2010. When she first opened the school in 2003, Ms. Bachal asked for (and received) financial help for renting from various local parties, then NGOs and any other means she could find. The financial support was limited to, “no salary for the teachers but… supports [for] us in terms of books, rent and maintenance.” She said in our interview:

There were merely 5 volunteers running school since 2003 to 2007. In 2007, Rotary Club of Karachi recognized the efforts and supported the school for books and copies. The support from Rotary Club of Karachi stopped in 2010 at which time the team and I decided to form an organization to arrange resources and extend both the curriculum and team for better education. In 2009, the Dream Foundation Trust was founded and all the resources from it were initially directed to the school project.

From 2001 to 2008, I taught the school. As the Rotary Club of Karachi support stopped, I started working in an organization and my monthly income was contributed to the school resources for things such as chalk and basic materials.

As of 2011, I moved into planning and management, resource mobilization and the counselling section of the school and organization. Since founding the Dream Foundation Trust, we have started to maintain increased formalities for recruiting staff that currently is comprised of 30 young women and 5 young men. The team works at the ground-level and look after the execution and implementation of both the school and foundation activities.

When asked about where the drive to be an educator began, Ms. Bachal recounts this story from her childhood:

When I was 6 years old, I saw my infant cousin die, coughing blood and wheezing for a breath of air - all because her mother was given an expired fever medicine. Medicine the child's own illiterate mother gave her. I experienced the agony of this loss, the heart-wrenching screams of my cousin’s mother. That day I decided: I have to stop this!

Attending school regularly, I soon came to see that I was the lucky one and my friends the ones missing out. I remained troubled by this until, at aged 12, I had a brainwave on how to redress this injustice: I would teach children at home the lessons that I myself had learnt in school.

I had the full support of my mother, Zainab Bibi, who endured social boycotts, verbal and physical abuse, to make sure her daughters got an education. She enabled us to break the cycle of disempowerment she herself suffered. Backed by my mother, I with a lot of help from my friends and my sister that worked with me, overcame the resistance from my father and brothers at home, as well as the conservative attitudes and reluctance of our community members.

What educating women can do for developing countries

In the short documentary film Small Dream by Gulnar Tabassum Ms. Bachal tells a room of young women, “If a male relative or neighbor objects [to you attending school because you are a girl], you have to learn to stand up for yourself… [do] not give up hope. You can change a ‘no’ into a ‘yes.’"

Later in the same film, the mother of one of Ms. Bachal's students recounts in the film that when defending her daughter's right to go to school to her husband she told him, “Our parents did not send us to school, see what kind of life we have led…"

The World Bank publication entitled Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity nicely summarizes a great deal of data on the relationship between educating girls better and better prosperity, as well as the relationship between not educating girls and national disparity. Less educated girls are more likely to:

• Marry while still children.
• Experience domestic violence.
• Be in poverty.
• Be without voice in household finance.
• Lack a voice in their own healthcare and well-being.
• Be restricted in their opportunity to improve not only their own situation but that of their children.

Countries like Pakistan that are featured in BBC opinion pieces as collapsing under the weight of poor education, poor healthcare and poor human rights situations. All of these reasons make increasing the number of educated women imperative. Pakistan is one of three countries left in the world where polio is still a significant health issue (along with Afghanistan and Nigeria) and education work still needs to be done so that parents will accept the available vaccinations for their children. Indeed it must be noted the state of public education and anti-polio-vaccination campaigning in Pakistan is such that, “Vaccination workers have been targeted, and 50 of them have been killed since 2012.”

Pakistan is also one of a handful of countries where the measles and death from this disease continues to be a significant problem that the World Health Organization says is preventing the disease's global eradication.

As noted by The Economist, Bangladesh has made significant strides in all social indicators since the 1980s that have it surpassing India in some social indicators and way ahead of Pakistan now in all. The path to improving social indicators was four-part according to The Economist study:

• More family planning and better autonomous access to healthcare for women.
• A diversification of agricultural and economic opportunity.
• Spending on social programs that is greater than most low-income countries supported by the country’s elite.
• The rise of quality NGO work led by the now-largest NGO in the world BRAC (Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee), a NGO that revolutionized microfinance but has become an agency of change that does anything and everything to alleviate poverty sustainably by giving people the tools to get ahead.

Consider that in the Legatum Institute’s 2014 Prosperity Index, India is 102^nd and Bangladesh is 104^th out of 142. It may seem bad for these two regional countries to be surrounded by Lebanon, Burkina Faso and Honduras in the index. Yet, this is worlds ahead of Pakistan’s 127^th ranking that sees it ranked only two places ahead of war-torn Syria in the index.

The Foundation, the tears behind and beyond

Early in the short documentary Small Dream by Gulnar Tabassum, Ms. Bachal says to a student: “Why are you crying? Share your problem with us, crying does not solve anything…” Yet, while teaching strength, Ms. Bachal also is willing to admit weakness and freely speaks of her star student Shahzadi:

She stood by me through the hardest of times. She was the one who wiped my tears. When I was ready to give up in exhaustion and felt that nothing was going to change… I thought maybe we need the support of men or others more powerful than us… I was sitting in a classroom and crying when Shahzadi came to me… [She told me:] We are there for you. Together we will make things better. Don’t lose heart.

Ms. Bachal continues the story in the documentary, “After hearing that one sentence, I felt an energy within me. If the children had so much hope that times would change and things would be better, then who was I to lose hope? From that day onwards, I stopped crying.”

Today, Ms. Bachal explains how international support from Ms. Obaid Chinoy, Madonna and many other donors has changed the school.

Things are completely changed such as school structure, curriculum, competent staff and strategies. Children attend school with uniforms and are attracted with technologies and the latest methodologies of teaching because we believe that children can only learn by doing. The school is furnished with a science lab, library, and computer lab. We have a Teachers’ Development Program through which we introduce upgraded techniques of teaching and unique methods of engaging children. Children attend online classes of English and Mathematics through several online software programs that has not been implemented even in private schools nearby. These things did not exist in our prior school.

Yet, Ms. Bachal is not satisfied. She wants to do more and puts every piece of currency she can to work to improve things for children. As an organization, they have projects and goals as follows:

1. Education – Dream Model Street School
2. Home School Literacy Program
3. Dream Savings Group
4. Computer Literacy Program
5. Skill Development Centre for Women
6. Library
7. Health and Hygiene Awareness [currently distributing polio drops; plans for an immunization center]
8. Dream Youth Network [a Youth Resource Center]
9. Theatre Group
10. Sports Events
11. Community Development Awareness Program [focusing on the prevention of early girl child marriages and issues related to maternal health]

Once we have accomplished a project, we move on toward other projects and extend their scopes. We formally have a financial policy and systems through which we receive, keep in record and acknowledge donors. We share with them the progress either monthly or quarterly.

Yet, she is far from done. Ms. Bachal’s recently presented her next initiative in New York to people including U.S. Ambassador At-Large for Global Women's Issues Catherine Russell, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and other leading women.

Education that considers the whole student

Ms. Bachal is not simply educating. While her school does educate boys as well, she is passionate about educating young girls and women. As she recounts in Small Dream nearly 6 years ago:

When we started the home school and adult education classes, we began to hold informal discussions with the girls about their rights and about marriage of choice. Each week we would choose a topic of discussion and ask them their opinions. We talked about marriage and women’s rights and about women’s education... We also spoke about how to make a case before the family and in front of others who oppose women’s education.

Responding to her brother’s unwillingness to educate his daughters, Ms. Bachal said in Small Dream:

Men who think this way have only one problem with women. They are afraid. They think if a woman is empowered they will lose their authority. Men don’t want to see women as equal partners who walk alongside them and this jealous behavior is also common in men who claim they want their women to be strong. Even religion has fed into the minds of men that women are somehow mentally inferior.

When asked about the data from the World Bank and other researchers on how educating girls can improve economies, Ms. Bachal responds:

I believe in these studies, but what I consider to be accumulated into these points:

• Women must be taught with civil responsibilities so that they realize their potential for it.
• Each woman should be empowered so that she can raise her voice for her rights and fight injustices for herself and others.
• Each woman must be taught social justice so that she treats her children equally without any gender discrimination which is a frontline issue in Pakistan.

Video on the importance of educating young women courtesy of The Girl Effect .

From 'on the fly' to measuring success

Ms. Bachal began teaching because she saw a need for education and decided to dedicate herself to it. Now she measures her success via her Dream Foundation Trust. She always looks for ways to improve her students’ experience through three methods she outlined in detail that those with education degrees (such as the author who has a masters in teaching) will recognize as both imperative to consistently improving the quality of education and extremely current with the most up-to-date practices in Europe and the United States.

• Monitoring: The organization has grown tremendously in the last three years and as a result our practices have also been improved... For monitoring specific benchmarks are decided and then tracked throughout the period of projects... The metrics for monitoring are shared with our [entire] working team...
• Evaluation: Our evaluation process has also evolved over a period of time. For each program/activity we undertake we document the impact of the program (both quantitative and qualitative) in the form of project reports which are shared with relevant stakeholders at end of activity, or on a periodic basis if it’s a long term program. The criterion for evaluation and its reporting is finalized with partners upfront.
• Accountability: The concept of accountability for the Dream Foundation Trust is two -fold. One is the accountability of finances related to any project/activity... The other aspect of accountability is judicious utilization of resources in a transparent manner.

The layers that impress

In a piece by the United States' National Public Radio Ms. Bachal was asked if it made her concerned about her own personal safety when she heard the story of how Nobel Peace Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai was shot. She replied:

I am not worried about this anymore. Now I'm not afraid. It is not just one Malala or one Bachal who has raised a voice to change this situation. There are a lot of other girls who are trying to change things. Even if they kill 100 Humairas, they won't be able to stop us.

Globalization has connected people around the world through trade, the Internet and terrorism, among other things. When people are better educated, they obviously have better opportunities. However, if one Humaira can turn an uneducated slum into generations of educated children, what could 100 or 1,000 do?

Instead of reading this, perhaps watching the below linked videos, and being impressed by the uniqueness of Ms. Bachal, consider the difference more people like her could make: more education, more jobs, improving economies, better human rights and decreasing human violence. Consider the multi-generational impact improving global education can have to your own family’s bottom line, no matter how distant. In the end, we are all increasingly connected and what is going wrong or right in other countries impacts our own.

Humaira Bachal's video channel with multiple documentaries of her story, including Small Dream by Gulnar Tabassum and films by Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, can be accessed here.

Separately, Dawn News documentary footage of Ms. Bachal can be found here.