Projects on the Go - Girls Reading to Succeed

This report highlights the progress and challenges faced by the Projects on the Go Bus (PoG), a mobile maker space that provides hands-on learning opportunities to underprivileged girls from low-income schools. The stakeholders involved in the project include students from Door of Awareness Schools and Care Foundation, Donors; Five River Technologies, COIN, ITEI, and GlobalGiving.

The report is about PoG having successfully served 102 girls from five low-income schools and provided them with vocational and technical training in Arts, Crafts, Electronics, Kitchen Gardening, Computer, and Photography. The project also allowed the girls to tinker, experiment, create, and analyze critically, thus helping them to choose a career or start their own small business through the training provided by the ALBBS Team.

The highlights of the reported period are the closing ceremonies in all schools to showcase the best works of the students to a larger audience, including school administration and parents. The shortlisted startups also presented their business ideas and plans to use and implement the skills they have learned to earn more income. During the ceremonies, the students exhibited their work and spoke confidently about it.

During the reporting period, the PoG Bus and the students' work were also displayed at the Faiz Festival.One of thechallenges faced by the project is to earmark schools that are interested in the long-term implementation of the project.

To address this challenge, we intend to engage more schools to empower more girls to be independent and to encourage them to become entrepreneurs.The project will use one-day and 12-session models to introduce vocational and technical skills tofemale students from underprivileged backgrounds. The best students who show commitment and interest in the skills will be further trained to learn advanced skills and develop businesses with their peers or family.

While working on the very challenging and stimulating project and something entirely new in Pakistan’s educational landscape, we were very happy to hear a mother comment at the closing ceremony; “I wanted my daughter to leave education and start doing the house help work with me because education wasn’t bringing her any immediate money and we need that to survive but I am amazed beyond expectation that my daughter learned a skill, made few things and was able to sell them today and she has money in her hands to take home. I like this kind of education where she is learning and becoming financially independent and contributing to the household without leaving school.”