It may seem like it's been forever since we've made any progress (sometimes it seems that way to us anyway!). However, finally we're moving forward. With all the political chaos in Pakistan, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the recent bombings of schools and other terrorist activities, and because we've had trouble dealing with the local politics of the village of Khane, we haven't made much progress toward renovating the school in Khane. We finally realized that in order to get something accomplished, we'd have to find a NGO partner in Pakistan who could help us navigate local politics and government red tape. After much searching we've finally found The CARE Foundation, Pakistan. Though we haven't committed 100% to working with them, they have done some extraordinary things in Pakistan, and we are exploring a partnership with them.
According to The CARE Foundation, they are the largest NGO providing education in Pakistan. They currently manage 182 schools in which they are educating more than 118,000 underprivileged children. I plan on traveling to Pakistan sometime over the next few months to meet up with them and come up with a plan of action for the school in Khane.
In other news, Heidi and I (along with our esteemed board members, Elizabeth O'Neill, and Justin Voorhees) have decided to take on some additional projects. We are anxious to move forward with a project. We are currently considering: building a school for another village in Pakistan that already rents the basement of a restaurant to educate their girls; starting a scholarship program for Liberian girls; and building a school in Nepal (working directly with The Mountain Fund's Trek4Good program). We will have more details after our February 13th meeting.
-Lizzy Scully
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