Pakistan
Save the Children in Pakistan
Save the Children has worked in Pakistan since 1985 – first with Afghan refugees and, since 1999, directly with Pakistani children and women. We have a strong portfolio of health, education and microfinance programs. We continue to address needs of Afghan children and families who remain in Pakistan because of Afghanistan's insecurity and the lack of a viable economy in their communities. Save the Children also is working in areas shattered by the 2005 earthquake to help residents build homes and "build back better" the health and education infrastructure.
Challenges for Children
Poverty levels have decreased by 10 percent since 2001 and over 80 percent of children ages 5-9 are enrolled in school. Yet life for millions of the poorest children and women remains one of hardship. Many families cannot afford basic health care or education; families also do not send girls to school because there are few female teachers or the distance between home and school is too great. The 2005 earthquake destroyed already-scarce health and education services and families lost homes, livestock and incomes.
Numbers at a Glance
- Over 25,000 women die each year due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth and about 300,000 infants (including 160,000 newborns) die in their first year.
- Only one in four births is attended by a skilled assistant.
- One in four families struggles to survive on $1 a day or less.
- Prior to the earthquake, the Allai Valley had no female doctors and only two trained birth attendants to serve a rural population of over 130,000 people. Male literacy rates there are less than 10 percent, and rates for women are less than 3 percent.
Our Response
Save the Children's Pakistan Country Office improves the health, education and livelihoods of vulnerable children and families in least-developed areas. In health, we seek to reduce deaths of mothers and children and improve the chances of newborns surviving their first month. In education, our goal is to increase children's access to and the quality of educational opportunities. We partner with a local microfinance organization to provide financial services to vulnerable families in six districts of Punjab Province and help families affected by the earthquake recover their livelihoods. Save the Children also is focusing resources on emergency preparedness.
Education
Save the Children works in districts with some of the lowest education statistics, including Batagram in North West Frontier Province and Killa Saifullah in Balochistan. We help open schools that have been closed, initiate school repair and construction projects and have trained and mobilized school management committees to implement over 1,400 school improvement projects.
Health
Large-scale initiatives define Save the Children's health portfolio. We mobilize communities to address local health needs and build the capacity of health care providers. Through the multi-year Saving Newborn Lives program, we seek to reduce child mortality while developing and promoting replicable, sustainable child health strategies. Through the Pakistan Initiative for Mothers and Newborns project, we are building the capacity of health providers in 10 districts and mobilizing communities in six districts And through a new project in the remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), we are improving child health services by strengthening providers of care and raising local awareness of the need for child health care.
Economic Opportunities
In partnership with Asasah, a local micro-finance institution, Save the Children provides poor families
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Waseem Iqbal, aged 18 months, from Bareela, Khanpur, is a beneficiary of Save the Children’s Haripur District Reproductive Health Program, in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Photographed by Ayesha Vellani. |
Helping Children Survive and Thrive After a Disaster
Pakistan is prone to natural disasters, with the risk of earthquakes in the northern and central areas, and floods and drought common in the south. Save the Children can respond quickly to meet both the immediate and longer-term needs of children affected by disasters.
Balochistan Floods
In June, 2007, flooding occurred in 21 districts of Balochistan, Pakistan's largest and poorest province. An estimated 250,000 families lost homes, food stocks, crops in the field and access to drinking water. Schools were damaged or destroyed, threatening education in areas which already had the country's lowest school enrollment rates.
Save the Children quickly provided almost 1,000 families with food rations and water purifiers, and more families received water purifiers and shelter materials as we received other funds. As the floods receded, we helped communities regain livelihoods and addressed health and safety issues caused by the floods, such as removing debris, installing latrines, purifying wells and distributing mosquito nets to families. We also conducted hygiene training so that children have clean and safe living environments.
In some 80 communities, Save the Children helped repair schools or create temporary structures and provided educational materials to help recover from the emotional impact of the disaster.
The Catastrophic 2005 Earthquake
When a massive earthquake hit in October, 2005, Save the Children began meeting the health, food and shelter needs of children within hours. In the year after the earthquake, we provided more than 30,000 families with shelter, 40,000 families with food, opened 113 "safe play spaces" to give children in displaced and affected communities a place to play and connect with peers and helped 11,000 children return to school.
The damage was so great and the children's needs so immense that it was not until March of 2006 that we transitioned our responses to longer-term development activities. Today, we continue to work in hard-hit rural communities, rebuilding local health and education infrastructures and helping families regain incomes.
In education, we are training teachers, working with communities to increase school enrollment and improve the quality of education. We also are urging the government to hire more female teachers and rebuild schools in a way which will encourage more families to enroll girls.
In health, Save the Children operates a busy rural health center, trains health workers from the Ministry of Health and supports the management, rehabilitation and improvement of government health services in Batagram District. We also have two nutrition programs for children. Both provide education about health, nutrition and hygiene, de-worming, and nutrition supplements.
Even before the earthquake, the high poverty level in Batagram posed a significant challenge to children's well-being. Save the Children's livelihoods programs help ensure that families can support their children's health and education. We have paid families in cash and food to help rebuild community infrastructures and attend vocational trainings, and provide assets such as fruit trees, chickens and sewing machines which can help families earn incomes.
Serving Afghan refugees
For over 20 years, Save the Children has assisted Afghan refugees in Pakistan. With many refugees unwilling to return home, we remain a key provider of health and education services. In the North West Frontier Province, Balochistan Province and Haripur, we make healthcare services available to hundreds of thousands of children and adults, monitor children's growth and train community health workers. We also help control epidemics and malaria in refugee camps; promote breastfeeding and strengthen ties between expectant mothers and birth attendants and provide postnatal care for mothers and newborns.
Our refugee education programs focus on teacher retention and maintaining girls' access to education. Save the Children also is exploring ways to make education programs for Afghan refugees less dependant on international assistance.
Planning for the Future
- Save the Children is committed to reconstruction and the development of child- and women-focused services in the earthquake-affected Batagram District, with a special focus on the Allai Valley.
- We will pay close attention to affected families' access to food and children's nutrition, as the earthquake destroyed the local agricultural and market infrastructure.
- Restoring family livelihoods and ensuring that the most vulnerable families – those headed by women, disabled and the elderly – have permanent shelters also will continue.
- We also will sustain education and health programs and strengthen the skills of our partners and the Pakistani government, through both tested and new strategies.
- Save the Children will continue to support our microfinance partner so that it can provide economic opportunities to the poorest families.
Income Opportunities for a Struggling Young Family
After her husband's death in January, 2007, Bahktaja, 20, and her three children moved into a small hut near her childhood home in the remote Allai valley. Her parents help as much as they can, but the elderly couple's resources are already scare. "Most days," explains Bakhtaja, "my children and I eat roti (flat bread) and green tea. Two or three times a week, my mother gives me money to buy the children powdered milk and black tea from the market."
Save the Children’s livelihoods program provided Bakhtaja with sewing training, and will also give her a sewing machine so she can earn a small income by tailoring clothes for her neighbors. She was one of over 1,000 women whom Save the Children provided with training in sewing, kitchen gardening, and other vocations. Bakhtaja also received 50 chickens, which are expected to lay some 1,000 eggs a month. The eggs will supplement the family’s diet and give Bakhtaja a source of income when she sells them in the local market.
