The Zobaida Jalal School offers education to girls in a small town in Pakistan. This opportunity, unorthodox until now, is spreading as schools open in surrounding villages.
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by Alex Cuff/PNNews Brief Editor Elders in a Pakistani town told the founders of a school for girls that they were ‘opening the gates of hell.’ Graduates are now breadwinners. 20 years ago the Jalal family went door-to-door impelling reluctant parents in Mand, Pakistan, to send their daughters to a new school for girls. Initially the town elders rebutted the idea of girls getting an education which might for example empower them to write letters to their boyfriends. Some parents, mostly those working as servants, enrolled their daughters in the Zobaida Jalal School. When the school began, the Jalal family guest house doubled as the classroom. Today there are over 30 classrooms and over 140 girls have graduated. The school has brought jobs to Mand and is bringing economic independence to its graduates some of who hold the best paying jobs in town. The girls learn English, Urdu, and Arabic, science, and social sciences. The also learn about Islam, women’s rights under the Koran, and they keep current event journals. They also learn that they can refuse to marry undesired partners proposed by their fathers. What does this mean for the town once the graduates pursue college and careers outside of Mand? It isn’t evident that the girls are permanently moving away, abandoning family and mimicking the ways of the west where many leave home after gaining an education (not benefiting the home town in which they were given the opportunity). 20 years later some of the elders lament not sending their children to school. Many of the graduates are employed as health workers at a maternity hospital who travel to outlying villages to teach health, hygiene, and birth control and provide sterilization kits to traditional midwives. This staff accompanies doctors to the homes of 300 women each month facilitating the communication between the families and the doctors. A dozen new schools have opened in surrounding villages because graduates are now available to teach. |