Think Creative - Issue 2

More than 5 million children are out of school in the country, of which 60 percent are girls. To address these challenges, the project in- corporates a gender-sensitive approach in all its activities, ensuring that girls and boys have equal access to educational materials through initiatives like the Mobile Bus Library. Pakistan Reading Project leads the development of policies that support reading programs, builds pre-service training curricula for the teaching of reading—a first for the country—and forges public-private partnerships for greatest impact and sustainability. During a gender assessment of reading activi- ties in the project’s schools in Sindh, Shaheen Ashraf Shah, Ph.D., Gender Advisor for the project, discovered that in many places physi- cal barriers like narrow streets, small entrances and lack of all-girls schools kept the Mobile Bus Library from successfully reaching girls and boys equally. And socio-cultural barriers such as limited mobility, harassment and security issues restricted girls from travelling to farther away and bigger schools in order to access the Mobile Bus Library. “The project’s gender ratio was skewed in the province,” explains Shah, who was raised in a rural area of Sindh and observed firsthand how women and girls suffer because of gender bias. Shah explains that initially, only 13 percent of the schools visited by theMobile Bus Library were girls’ schools. Out of 8,378 students bene- fitting fromactivities, only 28 percent were girls. Realizing the gender gap after Shah’s assess- ment, the Pakistan Reading Project team analyzed the situation, designed strategic interventions to ensure gender equity and charted out the next steps. More girls’ schools were added to the Mobile Bus Library’s route, and, for the first time ever, girls’ schools were invited by the neighboring boys’ schools to jointly participate in the read- ing activities. The interventions resulted in a significant increase in girls’ participation, from 28 to 35 percent. Shah says she is encouraged by the positive change she’s witnessing. “We know girls’ education is crucial in the fight against poverty,” she says. “When you educate a girl, you educate an entire community–and ultimately transform it.” n With reporting in Pakistan by Noman Manzoor CreativeAssociatesInternational.com | 21 “Seeing, touching and reading the text in the books opens new avenues of comprehension and understanding, and ultimately improved learning outcomes.” - Shahida Maheen, Mobile Bus Library lead, Pakistan Reading Project