Overordnede mål
The overall objective is to strengthen civil society to lobby and advocate for equal access to education for children of the Gawri minority language community in Pakistan.
Umiddelbare mål
The intervention to achieve the midterm objective consists of a two-pronged approach: 1. Strengthen civil society to advocate for MTB MLE education in the community as well as for official recognition by the Ministry of Education of the use of the minority language in primary schools. 2. Strengthen the current MLE programme so that results can be used for advocacy and lobbying.
Målgrupper
There are different target groups and beneficiaries. First, staff of GCDP and key community members will be trained to assist lobbying and advocating for inclusion of Gawri language in education and the implementation of the MTB MLE policy at community and district levels. Also, community members, members of community advocacy groups and parents of children attending the six MTB MLE pilots. Both female and male parents and opinion leaders in the communities will take part in community gatherings to discuss the importance of education in general, and mother tongue literacy in particular. They will learn about their rights and will be capacitated to express their voices and rights to lobby for equity in education for their children and their community at large. The direct beneficiaries of the intervention will be 150 Gawri children, about 200-300 parents and teachers in 6 MTB MLE pilot schools. They will enjoy education in their mother tongue and are actually provided with opportunities to learn, maintain their identity as Gawri, appreciating their own linguistic and cultural heritage. In particular, girls will benefit from using the mother tongue in school as that is often the only language they will have heard in and around the home. The indirect beneficiaries are the Gawri people of Kalam. Through this project, their language will be used in school and they will receive better education. Through better education they will have tools to break the cycle of poverty in which they are trapped, and to advocate for their rights and justice in their own community.
Resume
The objective of this project is to strengthen civil society to lobby and advocate for equal access to education for children of the Gawri minority language community in Pakistan. The Gawri people, who live in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Northern Pakistan, have been marginalised and excluded from education for generations. The community faces different kinds of hardship and poverty. Education could be a way out of poverty as it would allow Gawri children in the future to engage with the outside world, find work and earn an income. However, when the Gawri children go to school, education is delivered in a language they do not speak. The language issue causes many Gawri children to badly underperform in school and many (about 65%) drop out of school early. If nothing changes, the Gawri community will most likely remain trapped in the cycle of poverty and hardship. The project wants to strengthen the capacity of the Gawri Community Development Program to lobby and advocate with the government for inclusion of good-quality multilingual education so that sustainable and effective multilingual education for Gawri children will be implemented.