The Walkway School Enables Access To Education in Remote Thar Desert!

A few of the many reasons for a huge number of out-of-school children in Pakistan is the lack of educational facilities within the communities in the rural and remote areas. At the same time, the already poverty-stricken parents do not have the resources to send their children to other localities for acquiring education either which results in an extraordinary number of out-of-school children especially in third world countries like Pakistan.

As a part of the 2021-25 expansion plan — The Walkway School (TWS) has recently started focusing on enabling access to education for the underprivileged children in the underdeveloped areas of rural Sindh, Pakistan. Focused on SDG4 – Quality Education, the aim of this expansion plan is to provide cost-efficient sustainable facilities in the underdeveloped areas to facilitate the local population and provide them education along with strategic and academic support within their communities.

After carrying out an in-depth field survey, several facilities were identified by The Walkway School in the remote areas of Thar desert (District Tharparkar, Sindh) where either the children were studying under the open sky on the scorching sand or in a hut made of tree sticks with zero facilities. Starting with an identified location at Village Jhampo (UC Giryanchho, Taluka Islamkot, District Tharparkar) near the Indo-Pak border, a community engagement campaign was carried out in the first half of 2021.

With a community mobilization campaign of more than 2 months, The Walkway School was able to build the facility within the promised time frame and facilitated the villagers. With an estimated 325+ households, the facility currently has an enrollment of 70+ students and has the capacity to facilitate 80 more children at the moment. Unlike before, the facility now has solar-supported electricity, washrooms and proper record keeping as well as performance evaluation management. Moreover, the facility has the capacity to facilitate over 1500 child population of the particular area over the next 4 to 8 years.

The facility was recently visited by the top management of The Walkway School in order to review progress of the facility as well as children and identify further needs of the children. Since the start of new and proper facility, the school has seen 20+ new admissions whereas 45+ students from various grades have been promoted to the next higher grades after passing the satisfactory performance requirement.

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