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[Source](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-gSxF2col2eo/X-SDkwqwDxI/AAAAAAAA8kc/ftE1wFJMTkAWsTrFve1hAlzzgVxOhmgjQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600-rw-e300/1608811410160283-0.png)
Pakistan is a great country in South Asia. It is dominated by Muslims. They are known for their good and humanitarian services. As I write today about them, I seek to start with Asalaamu alaikum. Great greetings as they say and know.
Speaking about NGOs/ Charity organizations in Pakistan, there is a whole lot. Humanity is something they stand for. For that reason, there are many NGOs we can talk of. we have the Aman
Foundation which is focused on health and education. Another is Caritas Pakistan which was formed in 1965 to reduce poverty and solve injustice in the world. Again, Friends of Pakistan was brought into existence in September 2008 to help support the democratic rulers of Pakistan. This was to help them bring the people practicing democracy under an umbrella. Lastly, I will speak of The Citizens Foundation which was founded by Syed Asaad Ayub Ahmad whose focus is on education, economic development, and women’s empowerment. These are a few of the NGOs in Pakistan. And for this contest, I would be writing about the Citizens Foundation.
<center>**Introduction of The Citizens Foundation (TFC)**</center>
As education is key to every child, some parents didn’t have what it takes to take them to school. Aside from that, many young citizens of Pakistan might have been deprived of the privilege of going to school. In August 1965, Mushtaq Chhapra supported by Ahsan M. Saleem and Ateed Riaz founded The Citizen foundation. The foundation aimed to help and afford a good education for children who couldn’t get access to that. Given this, they built and owned over 1833 schools to help grow Pakistan’s leaders.
<center>**Origin**</center>
As per the research done in Pakistan in the early 90s, it was drawn for there that about 24% of the population was below the poverty line, had unemployment, and had low literacy rates. As to solving this problem, In Karachi in 1995, The citizen foundation was formed to help journey on a new path for Pakistan. Their start-up technique to lure parents to send their children to their community schools was to make sure a female teacher is hired from the community. This made it easy to convince parents to send their wards to school mostly ladies. Their student ratio is 50:50 that’s boys to girls. But for their employment ratio, it is known as the largest employer of women because of its idea of having more female teachers.
<center>**The Vision, Mission, and Values of TCF**</center>
Schools and other privileges couldn’t get to some people. Especially those from the slum areas. This brought about their vision of positive change which is to break the barriers and give privileges to those who lacked them in rural areas to help build great agents of positive change in Pakistan. This was the goal or vision that took on a mission to focus on the future and education. Their mission is to train students to be moral, spiritual, and intellectually enlightened through good educational systems. They believe these were the principles that will hold them to being the people of Pakistan needs them to be. Values bind us to whatever we believe or belong to. The values are integrity that is show they are in for what they say. And anyone in or part of TCF should know to uphold it. Another is ownership and lastly is continuous development. Not only will students graduate and just leave, but they also will be part of TCF to keep making the change happen. These are what they stand for. From their vision to their values is a simple way of representing a great foundation. Simple yet, do more great things in complex ways.
<center> **The Model of TCF**</center>
This is the first time I have heard an NGO have a model they use to manage their activities. Here TCF has about 7 models that have helped them manage their mission for the past 27 years. They are heightened below.
1.Catering to the neediest: Not that education is free for poor students. But TCF calculates the fees of a child based on the earnings of the child’s parent. As per their fees policy, parents don’t pay more than 5-7&% of their income as fees. And fees are decided considering two options: the income of the child as said and the number of children going to school. This is the best way to help a parent with more kids attend school and still doesn’t feel the stress of school fees.
2.Embedding schools in the heart of urban slums & rural communities:
3.Purpose-built schools: The main component of TCF is the schools they built. They used this model to make sure that schools are built at the center of the communities. This was a way to maximize the number of students who would attend from the community.
4.All-female faculty & a 50% female-student gender ratio: This model was a great way to lure parents. TCF hires only females which is a way to allow parents to bring their kids to school. TCF caters to the transportation of their teachers to school which somehow is a convincing factor to attract and retain the most qualified teachers from immediate and neighboring communities.
5.Ensuring a high-quality education: For this reason, TCF train their teachers, principals, and area managers excessively. Their teaching principle is based on the knowledge of the teacher on what he or she teaches rather than theory.
6.Holistic student development & alumni support: They didn’t build only schools for kids. They also provide support to alumni who are making headway in both secondary and university education. They make sure they mentor them to see them acquire scholarships to study high. In Karachi. TCF started its first college for grades 11 and 12.
7.Uplifting the entire community: Due to their schools in various communities, they run developmental projects in these communities. They make sure the people of the community have something to take home. An example is the organizing of literacy and numeracy development programs in the communities where their schools are located to teach reading and writing to about 160,000 adults.
8.Professional Management: As part of their values to promote their integrity, they work on their ways to ensure great and efficient management practices to maintain accountability and integrity. They keep track records of their enrollment, and gender ratio in every school which is collected every month. Not forgetting their teachers who are tested based on the content they teach. This is a great way to manage a wonderful foundation like theirs.
<center>**What TCF do**</center>
<center> Communities and number of schools there</center>
[source](https://www.tcf.org.pk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/map-2022.jpg)
TCF is there for education. The literacy level in Pakistan is what is dear to them. they have their 5Cs as to what education means to them. they don’t just see education as going to school they visualize it to be Creative and critical thinking, Conceptual knowledge, Confidence, Core Values, and Communication skills. For this reason, TCF has built over 1833 schools in the heart of the urban slums and rural communities. The picture below shows how they are spread out in their cities. They have about 280,000 students. These are the students they give proper education to using their 5Cs.
[source](https://www.tcf.org.pk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ADP.jpg)
Again, they also have their alumni at heart. After they go through their education system, they have programs that guide them to a better future. Some of these are the Rahbar Program which serves as a gateway to them being empowered and mentored by people they look up to, the Alumni Development Program which helps their alumni not only secure their place in the university but also gain scholarships to study there, conduction of career and counseling to help guide their alumni after school to their career paths and lastly is their summer camps which engage their students through games and dram-based activities.
<center> 
Women learning vocational skills</center>
[source](https://www.tcf.org.pk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/vocational-training.jpg)
They also have community programs as they do to help build the communities their schools are located in. one being the teachers that they hire from those communities as means of employment. We have a look at their Aagahi Programme which serves as a platform for women in school communities to acquire literacy skills, provision f clean water to school communities, and vocational training to help give women in these communities work to grow from.
<center> **Some works.** </center>
In April 2019, launched their appeal to battle Covid 19. This was being led by most of their alumni who located the most devasting households.
This was to help them as they battle Covid-19 together. In about 45,500 households in 250 communities, an amount of PKD 110,000,000 was spent to help those households and give them hope.
In the health care aspect, they provided remote hospitals and clinics in Pakistan to areas that needed urgent attention. They used PPE Kits 20,000 for about 34 healthcare centers and this cost them Worth (in PKR) 26,000,000.
In the educational sector which is their field, they launched a distance learning and support program to help students still learn from home as a result of the pandemic. They provided educational magazines for both primary and secondary school students. They then launched tutoring groups in school communities to keep students active with their studies even with schools being close down. They did some Television education to help distance education students. They had about 6,000,000 views. To their educational magazines, they gave 182,000 out to students. For the small group learning in communities, they had about 2,500 volunteer tutors who took care of that.
This was how TCF helped in the time of covid as they have always done.
<center>**Conclusion.**</center>
The Citizen Foundation has been here with us for about 27 years. From how they started to how they are going, they have stayed on their vision and mission, and this I what a foundation should be. What I love most about the future is how there have structures for everything. A role to govern why they do this and that. An example is, we should have female teachers and reason was to make parents feel easy bringing their children to school, especially the girls. This is what I loved most about their structures.
The Citizen foundation has proven to be one of the foundations that stick to their words. From 1995 till 2022, they have projects or works they have done. For this, the world recognizes them and not only Pakistan. Checking their awards, they have won various ones including the 2017 - UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy, 2016 were part of the Top 10 finalists for the OECD DAC prize, 2015 - Schwab's Social Entrepreneur of the Year, in 2014 - Ramon Magsaysay Award, informally thought to be the “Nobel Prize for Asia”, in 2013 - Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurs, 2011 - Clinton Global Initiative, and then in 2010 - World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) Award by the Qatar Foundation. They did well for their country.
In my last words, I didn’t just choose The Citizen Foundation because it was the one that popped up in my google search. I went through all articles to see what the world has about TCF. That was when I saw the five-star rating from Charity Intelligence Canada which their rating was based on financial transparency, results reporting, demonstrated impact, need for funding, and cents to the cause which they had a good and great response from them all. This showed me it wasn’t just another foundation, but a charity foundation that stands for it speaks.
*I say a big thank you to @hivepakistan and @Spiritsurge for this amazing contest. I have learned a lot from it. @thisisnativeboy should join this contest. It's amazing*
***References***
[TCF Official Website](https://www.tcf.org.pk/)
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Citizens_Foundation)
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