DIL News 2009 - Summer

Letter from Executive Director

For a context as diverse as Pakistan, creative solutions are essential if quality and sustainability are to be achieved. Few education development programs are able to sustain initiatives long enough to see the fruit of their creative endeavours ripen. Fortunately, DIL has seen the successful implementation of many interventions across the four provinces; allow me a moment to share these with you.

Mansehra, a restive area in NWFP, is home to DIL Mazullah School. During a meeting between parents and the village education committee that I happened to attend, a discussion was going on about community’s perception of quality education. One father shared his experience, “I am a matriculate but don’t have the confidence to talk in public. My daughter, she studies in class four at this school, comes home, stands up in a room full of people and without hesitating says what she knows, what she thinks. How did she learn this?”

In remote villages of Khairpur, where gender based violence is still common and where girls seldom complete primary education, today nine confident, young DIL school graduates are training as teachers. They will return to their villages after summer and start teaching at schools where they themselves studied and became the first girls in their particular village to complete their schooling.

Wherever I turn I see students, parents, teachers, community members, and DIL partners and team members working together to bring quality education to DIL schools. Supporting, encouraging and creating the opportunities for sparks to fly high, often from a great distance, are DIL patrons and volunteers.

I have worked for more than twenty years in Pakistan, teaching young people and working in national and international development organizations. It is now, since joining DIL, that I am truly humbled by the dedication and perseverance of this virtuous circle of people committed to bringing quality education to children who otherwise would fall through the cracks. I hope that you will be here next year, the year after that, and many more years yet to witness the achievements of young people you are investing in today.

Anjana Raza

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