Education and Child Rights

ALFLAH WELFARE SOCIETY believes that Education is an essential tool for achieving sustainability of political daily change.

Yet in Pakistan this is still a fundamental inequality. National statistics reveal that only just over half of 5-9 year olds go to school, and half the adult population is illiterate, including 2/3 of women.

Working with the disadvantaged communities in Pakistan, our work in education focuses on raising public awareness and sharing information with the public on public policies and human rights principles.

It is against this background that ALFLAH WELFARE SOCIETY strives to improve education standards in Pakistan through the provision of basic education to the poor and marginalized communities In Pakistan especially for the women and children, because; An educated woman gains higher status and an enhanced sense of efficacy, She tends to marry later and has greater bargaining power and can distinguish between desirable and undesirable, She also has greater bargaining power in the house hold after marriage, An educated woman tends to desire a smaller family size and seek the health care necessary to do so.

For females education profoundly changes their lives, how they interact with society and their economic status and this is the driving force behind this initiative.

Examples of ALFLAH WELFARE SOCIETY interventions include:

• Formation of community schools
• Teachers’ trainings
• Strengthening of school management committees
• Children resource centers
• Provision of drawing books and sports material
• Leadership trainings to child groups
• Child right trainings to school teachers, parents and community activists

All these initiatives have facilitated the organization, the community to take first steps toward creating an education for sustainable development program.

Child Rights

The theme is based on the CRC that seeks to address the particular human rights of children and to set minimum standards for the protection of their rights. It is the only international treaty to guarantee civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely accepted human rights treaty that has been signed up by most of all the United Nations member states of which Pakistan is party and ratified it.

Yet a child right is still an illusion in Pakistan. Society and strong culture practices do not support the rights of the child as stipulated in the international treaties and the national constitutions of the country.

Against this backdrop ALFLAH WELFARE SOCIETY interventions are geared toward addressing the fundamental inequality through:

Capacity Building and Child Participation, and knowledge sharing, Raising community awareness and sensitization on children rights based on CRC

Conduct child rights trainings in government and non government schools for children and out of school children.