NCHD to Re-Open around 100 Feeder Schools
in Swat, Malakand

Associated Press of Pakistan
Saturday, July 25, 2009

ISLAMABAD, July 25 (APP): The National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) will soon re-open around 100 feeder schools in the militancy-hit areas of Swat and Malakand division, Chairperson NCHD Nafisa Shah said on Saturday. “As the situation has returned towards normalcy in the affected areas of Swat and Malakand we are going to re-launch our educational projects there”, she told APP.

She said the NCHD’s feeder schools were established in areas where there were no government schools to provide education to children. “Now by reopening these schools we will try to achieve 100 percent enrolment of children of 5-7 years”, she added.

She said re-opening of feeder schools in Swat and Malakand division would also help ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, would be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

Nafisa Shah said that equal focus would be made on boys and girls to have access to education.

She said that the NCHD had devised a system of dropout prevention, which hinged upon private-public partnership, the teacher and community volunteers. This system is running quite successfully, she added.

She said that the NCHD took an active part in facilitating internally displaced persons at camps and would continue to assist them during the rehabilitation phase, especially in the fields of education and health. She said that the NCHD kept on educating hundreds of displaced children at its transitional schools at different IDP camps. The teachers deputed in these schools were trained in trauma counseling to help children keep aside their problems and worries”