The Italian Friends of The Citizens Foundation

Italian Friends of The Citizens Foundation is an Italian OdV that promotes female education in Pakistan. The association is the Milanese partner of the Pakistani NGO The Citizens Foundation – TCF which has been operating in the education sector since 1996, building secular and quality schools for the most disadvantaged in Pakistan, especially girls. Thanks to awareness and fundraising campaigns, Italian Friends of TCF affirms the values ​​of TCF: overcoming privileges and social barriers, encouraging women’s access to school and promoting positive change in society through education.

Since 2010, Italian Friends of TCF OdV has raised funds for TCF schools in Pakistan with small initiatives, such as the sale of sweets at Christmas. Since it officially became a non-profit registered in Italy, the organization has also been able to develop projects to finance the education of Pakistani children in TCF schools.

The projects are designed in close collaboration with The Citizen Foundation and are implemented by the latter on the territory, thus making use of the knowledge that the local staff have of communities and individuals.

The projects that we have carried out so far operate, always in the field of education, in three large macro-areas:

 – girls’ education;

 – support for teachers;

 – the rebirth of abandoned government schools

Many girls in Pakistan cannot study because they are forced to marry or work from an early age. In our projects, TCF teachers and principals make regular visits to families to understand their concerns and convince parents of the importance of their daughters’ education. Furthermore, teachers, as women, become for them models of professional achievement capable of inspiring the younger ones and giving impetus to their ambitions.

The other problem, at an educational level, on which Italian Friends has intervened together with TCF in Pakistan is the state of abandonment of many government schools. Structures left to their own devices and without equipment, absentee teachers, very low student attendance rates: these are the three main problems we have tried to solve. In past years, therefore, some of our projects have been dedicated to the rehabilitation of these schools, both from a managerial and didactic point of view.

www.tcfitalia.org