Agents of change

"I wake up early in the morning and go to clean shrimps for two hours. I come home, quickly wash and change and go to my TCF school. It is the best part of my day. I get to wear clean clothes, study and play. Once I come back home, I have to do my duties in the house and I have no time for anything else," says 10-year-old Rubeena, a student at the TCF School in Machar Colony, Karachi.

Rubeena is one of the millions of Pakistanis who live below the poverty line who now have access to quality education thanks to The Citizens Foundation (TCF). Though much of her childhood innocence is lost, she at least has the good fortune of being given the means to fulfil her dreams. Her mother fights with her father almost every day to allow her to go to school so that she may ultimately become a teacher and escape the drudgery of a poverty-stricken, extremely patriarchal, controlled life.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the choices you make in life.

You can choose to give in to herd instinct and carp about the state of affairs in your country and pass the buck back and forth, playing the blame game to a tee. Or you can choose to make sure the buck stops with you.

You could choose to be different and ensure that you are no longer going to be part of the problem. Instead, you will proffer a palpable solution that will strike at the root cause of the issues and help turn your country into the haven you want it to be.

One balmy evening, in the summer of '95, six Pakistani businessmen took a decision after a particualrly fine dinner. After six hours of country bashing, bemoaning the state of affairs on every count and complaining about the pathetic state of apathy that was seeping into society, they decided enough was enough. As socially-conscious citizens, they decided that they would generate their own winds of change. They took it upon themselves to come up with answers and provide the solutions. Instead of whingeing and crying they decided that they would step forward to make a difference. And what a difference they've made!

The big six adopted the probe and strobe approach to solving the problem. Poverty, illiteracy, hygiene issues, demographic imbalances, crime, population explosion, intolerance after listing the major issues that were plaguing Pakistan, they realised that most of them could be sorted out by providing one solution quality education for the underprivileged.

Under Article 37 of the Constitution of Pakistan, every citizen has the right to a decent education.

But the ground reality was that the country was polarised in terms of the kind of primary and secondary education it was providing. Either you could go to one of the state-of-the-art elite schools if you could afford it, or you could go to a government school, which is best left without comment, and which, in any case, are too few in numbers to accommodate all school-going children. What was sorely lacking were schools that were well-equipped with the basic paraphernalia essential for effective learning; schools looked after by qualified and dedicated teachers, which would provide a clean, hygienic and encouraging environment for underprivileged children. There were hundreds, like Rubeena, who needed to be picked up off the streets and educated.

Much thought was put into the project and every angle was examined with a magnifying glass.

That night, TCF was conceived amid sheets of home work and the ecstatic savouring of the definite knowledge that they were going to be 'agents of positive change'. Education has a long gestation period and most politicians don't want to invest in schooling as it takes a very long time to show tangible results. Even though Anita Gulham Ali of the Sindh Education Council of Pakistan had expressed that very opinion, the big six had made a bona fide commitment to themselves and their country: they had decided to make a dent in illiteracy during their lifetime. They realised that if they wanted to sustain their efforts and have it bear fruit, they would have to build a rock-solid foundation.

The Citizens Foundation was galvanised from the recesses of idle conversation to becoming a juggernaut of perpetual motion. The target that they had set their sights on was to build 1,000 schools in Pakistan. Schools would have to be constructed where they were needed most. The TCF foundation schools would require qualified teachers, so they would need to set up a Teachers Training Institution. Their schools would offer the National Curriculum of Pakistan, but in a value-added manner. They would enrich the curriculum by teaching English and Urdu at an early age, provide vocational training and lay emphasis on hygiene and cleanliness. There was much to be done and these were men in a hurry to get the job done to perfection.

Being highly regarded professionals in their chosen fields, they decided that once they had taken a conscious decision to make a difference through education, they would run TCF on a very professional basis. They would leave no stone unturned in realising their collective goal and they would honour their pledge, come what may. In retrospect, they chuckle at the reaction to the very first presentation of their proposed scheme one prospective donor said laughingly, "One thousand schools? Have you guys gone crazy?" to which one of the big six replied, "The state of our country is such that it requires a crazy solution."

TCF has come a long way since then. It has reached a target of 600 purpose-built school units with an enrolment of 80,000 students in 63 locations across Pakistan, with an impressive 50 per cent female ratio in almost every school. TCF has a 'female-only' faculty of 4,150. It also operates a dedicated Teacher Training Centre in Karachi to train their teachers. A commendable total of 6,026 jobs have been created in communities in which TCF operates.

The societies where their schools are located are already beginning to feel the difference! The big six had always wanted their schools to be on par with private schools. They were very clear that they were not going to build poor schools for poor people.

Their philosophy was simple. Every student of a TCF school must feel like an important member of society. That is why the parents pay fees. They assess how much a family can pay towards their child's education; TCF schools have a flexible fee plan that can accommodate fees as low as Rs10 per month.

It is imperative that the parents don't feel it is a charity school, or else it will be treated like a parking lot to be occupied only at will. Even the poorest parents have a sense of pride that they are actively contributing to their child's education. Of course, 95 per cent of the fees are borne by TCF. The children are provided free uniforms and books. The schools have all been designed on a modular basis by in-house architects as two of the founder members are architects by profession. The buildings conform to the same standards and have large airy classrooms with lots of natural light (power cuts are the norm rather than the exception in most places). They all have a large quadrangle and an abundance of greenery and foliage. In sharp contrast to government schools, they are spanking clean and students take pride in keeping their school shipshape.

It is heartening to note that, compared to other local schools (both government and private), TCF students excel across the country. In the 2007-08 matriculation board examination, TCF students achieved a 98 per cent result in the Karachi Board examination versus only 77 per cent for other schools. TCF students have also excelled and attained a 100 per cent result in the Lahore Board examination as opposed to only 52 per cent scored by the other schools!

Danish Mumtaz (executive producer, script writer and co-director) and Umair Tareen (director) are as alike as foam and foil! But they harmonise beautifully when working together. Their common ground was the constraints of working with non-existent funds, oodles of passion, dedication to the cause and the hours spent discussing their pet project, TCF. Being very busy professionals, it spoke volumes of their commitment.

After the fun of planning for five to six months, crunch time came when they flew down to Karachi in May this year to organise the crew and equipment for their documentary. They had planned down to the last detail. It took them only a day to gather what they needed and proceed to shoot on location for the next 14 days.

"Our biggest challenge," says Mumtaz, "was to come up with a good script. We were very clear that it should not compel people to donate out of a sense of guilt or pity, but out of inspiration. We wanted people who would be committed for a long time rather than a one-off 'poor things' kind of reaction. We didn't want to make a typical child living in filth, with flies buzzing around open wounds kind of film. While we wanted to portray the stark reality, we also wanted to bring out the spirit and the spunk of these children and their parents mainly the mothers, who were determined to make the best of the golden opportunity they knew they'd been blessed with."

A practical difficulty they faced was the logistical problem of traipsing all over the country to the locations of the TCF schools, some in remote areas in harsh terrain. And the sun beat down relentlessly during the shooting. Through the easy cribbing while filming at Ketibandar in the interior of Sindh, Umair had to remind himself of the sobering fact that it was a one-off thing for them, but a daily ordeal for the little children whose stories they were filming.

One problem they had not anticipated was the veering from the script. What seemed like a good story to tell on paper, took on a totally different hue on film on account of the protagonist being shy and not able to communicate effectively. On the other hand, a fleeting footnote in the script got an unexpected fillip when a police constable's widow, the mother of Kiran, a TCF graduate, got emotional and spoke passionately about the wonders a TCF education had brought into the life of her daughter who had recently got a job with the prestigious TRG (The Resource Group).

Food poisoning was another irritant they had not factored in. While wolfing down the Lahori kababs and washing it down with mango juice, they didn't suspect what havoc was going to be created in the next 48 hours! But the filming didn't stop and they got 22 hours of footage, out of which two films and a commercial for TCF would get made! They were very happy indeed with their work, especially the footage they captured of the rebuilding of earthquake-proof schools and homes in the earthquake-prone regions to show the patrons in Dubai and all over the globe. Some of their best footage was lost, because the camera they rented malfunctioned. Luckily they realised soon, and managed to recover almost all the footage.

"We are now looking for a corporate donor to sponsor the film so we could cover the costs of production," says Mumtaz.

Mumtaz worked in the US as a documentary filmmaker and moved to Dubai in 2003. He started the company, The Gold Mine Films, in 2007. Why did he decide to call his firm Gold Mine Films? "Because," as Mumtaz eloquently explains, "every one of us has a gold mine or vision of happiness that we dream of, and it has nothing to do with money. My gold mine is different from yours.

"For example, Umair's gold mine is his desire to be a sheep farmer in New Zealand, while mine is to spend a comfortable life and quality time with my family. I guess it is a substitute for the word 'happiness'."

"My first film was on an oil rig," says the reticent Tareen, who once worked for Geo TV, "and doing work like this gives me a break and makes me feel alive.

The company is focused on producing at least one film a year that is purely for creative expression. Something we can send out to film festivals globally.

"We like to look for hope and find it, where most people don't. If we can use our privileged existence to assist the underprivileged and help them regain their dignity, it would be a life well lived."

Imran Khan, an avid supporter of TCF, says in his interview in the documentary.

"I think there are two reasons why TCF is the one NGO working in education that I back and I fully support. Firstly, the way TCF manages the schools and the teachers' training, which is better than any other NGO... Secondly, they have a mixed syllabus which enables children from lower backgrounds to actually come up and compete with children from English medium schools. So I would urge donors to help TCF as much as they can because your money will really go to the right place and it will really go to help the future of Pakistan."

The hands that help are holier than the lips that pray...