Projects on the Go - Girls Reading to Succeed

According to HDR 2018, Pakistan's mean years of schooling for Females are 3.8. Pakistan's Gender Inequality Index value is 0.541. Over 90% of girls enrolled in government schools come from low income households. The education is of poor quality and the curriculum does not give basic training to earn a living. These young girls often drop out due to family pressure, closed mind set and unavailability of funds. The education imparted would lead them to be hired as a house maid or do some low income clerical job. There is a possibility they might not get hired because of competition and decrease in economic activity due to Covid-19.

Projects on the Go - Our mobile maker space for young girls targets the twin problem of relevant skill based education as well as improving the prestige for technical and vocational education and training at a crucial stage of a child's life.
1. Young girls are receiving education that adequately equips them for their future careers.
2. Through POG, they are being offered alternative pathways, so that they can gain skills needed to earn a living, live in dignity and contribute to the economy.
3. They are also provided with a small loan for starting up their own business and start earning a living if they get skilled enough to propose a startup idea.

The project has six different clubs/maker spaces i.e. Art, Craft, Computer/ICT, Electronics, Kitchen Gardening and Photography.

Stakeholders: Door of Awareness Schools (Trust schools for the children living in slum), Five River Technologies, COIN and ITEI and GlobalGiving

Issues/Challenges: For one academic year, this project was piloted in five low income trust schools in Lahore targeting approximately 120 girls between grades 6^th to 8^th. Initially it was planned to run POG in Government schools for girls but due to Covid-19 SOPs and restrictions the schools remained closed for quite long. We eventually chose low income schools for the girls living in slums where the school dropout rate was high as their parents wanted them to work and earn money to contribute to the household finances. This hindered their growth and development along with access to basic education. We suggested POG as a solution to this and to a very good extent we were able to achieve our goals.

The Entrepreneurship Model

Through POG, the main objective is not only to teach hands on skills to young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds but also to introduce them to social entrepreneurship skills and equipping them with ideas and support for their small scale businesses. Social entrepreneurship is the process through which individuals, startups and entrepreneurs develop and find solutions that directly address social issues. A social entrepreneur, therefore, is a person who explores business opportunities that have a positive impact on their community, society or the world.

The focus of POG is to enable young girls to make their own products by using their skills. By creating new products and services, they stimulate new employment, which ultimately results in the acceleration of economic development.

After one year of practically learning their respective clubs’ skills, they are now ready for their final projects which will further help us identify small business ideas that deserve the seed money loans.

The business ideas of all startups are now ready on paper (business canvas). They have learnt about product development and have identified the stage of their product.

Now they are learning about pricing their product. They have learnt how to calculate their expenditures. Based on this and the desired profit, they are learning how to finalize a price for their products.

The business studies instructor have engaged them through discussions with their club mentors to identify the estimated costs of the raw material and other resources required to run the business. As most of the work was related to Mathematics, many girls were reluctant and doubting their skills. Hence, the instructor also used peer to peer learning methods (bringing in the girls who had completed their task earlier) to build the confidence of those who felt challenged. These girls checked the work of other clubs and assisted them in how to calculate the estimated price.

Since many girls were not confident that they will be able to do the task, they initially struggled to maintain their interest in the topic. The instructor had to explain the steps gradually and multiple times to make sure they understood the concepts and then used them while doing all the calculations. Once one club finished its task, the other clubs also felt motivated to complete it.

After all clubs will calculate an estimated price of their product, we will start working with them on the marketing and communication strategies for their businesses.