Newsletter June 2018
Visiting Pakistan
What a joy it was to visit the children and families of Chak Jala Din, Pakistan in May this year. We were so overwhelmed to see children come welcome us at the airport. Haroon, our Program Manager saw it as an added opportunity for children to visit the beautiful new airport just recently opened in Islamabad. We were in Pakistan for 3 weeks and got to see the program first hand. Met with Open Hands global staff, none of whom we had met other than interviewing them on skype! We were not disappointed, the vision and the love for serving the community was incredible. We also visited with the principal and teachers of Station School 2 and were delighted to hear how well some children were doing, assimilating and competing with the mainstream students. Fourteen of our fifteen children passed and moved to their next grades making their parents, teachers and us very proud.
After-School Program
During the summer break, June-August the afterschool program is converted to a day summer school. The children are now attending full day of classes. We have purchased a 55 inch LED TV, that will be functional as soon as we move to a more secure and improved space in July. We are excited at the possibility of children learning from phonics, videos and movies.
While in Pakistan, we were able to foster collaborations with local businesses and organizations – “Ace Solutions”, a BPO services organization that also works as an American call center has committed to once weekly English accent training class for both the students and teachers. More details in the next newsletter when the program is operative.
Healthy Meals
The non-profit organization “Thali” has come alongside and is committed to supporting the poorest beneficiary children with dry groceries including, flour, rice, lentils, sugar, basmati ghee, tea and milk. We hope that we can expand this relationship and provide a healthy snack for the community children attending Station School 2.
Building a Community Centre
In our previous newsletter we had hoped to improve the facilities of where we were running our after school program. However, since then it has become clear that we need to build a permanent facility that would allow us to expand the program to more than 15 children and equip it with facilities that can truly support good quality education and health and wellness programs.
We are delighted to report that 1 kanal piece of land has been donated to Open Hands Global, Pakistan that is 10 mins walking distance from the Chak Jalal Din community. This land is now designated for building a Community Centre that would ensure sustainability of the program and become a central hub for all community children and youth to access essential social, educational and health programs.
The periphery of the land has been marked with a short wall and architectural and engineering drawings are underway to build a 3 level structure that would contain a number of different facilities and services. The important features of the community centre would be 1) a large community meeting hall with kitchen for after school programs/community gatherings/health camps/wellness programs and shared meals, 2) Computer hub and library for job searches/ Interview preparation/exam preparation and 3) several smaller meeting/seminar rooms where adult teacher trainings and smaller group meetings can take place.
The cost of building the main floor of this Centre is estimated at C$80K – we hope that with your generous support and your participation in our fundraising activities we will get there, slowly but surely.
Clothing Drive
Special thank you to all the ladies, friends of Open Hands Global, Canada who generously donated new and lightly used traditional clothes and shoes. We were able to bring more than 100 shalwar kameez to Pakistan and hold a fun evening with the beneficiary children, their moms, sisters and grandmothers. It was a great evening where the ladies got to participate in games, singing and a tea reception. All the donated clothes were beautifully displayed on hangers and the women got to choose the dresses they wanted. Mothers and grandmothers expressed their heartfelt gratitude to everybody supporting their children and felt that the presence and programs of Open Hands Global in the community were having a tremendous impact on the children confidence, their desire to learn and will to succeed.
Children receiving gifts of stationary and chocolates sent all the way from Canada!
