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10 May 2026
Kasur city, with its estimated 0.5 million population, is located in Punjab, South of Lahore city, and has pockets of extreme poverty, with children working in brick kilns and carpet weaving, and critically low literacy, especially female literacy. Government schools in the district often face teacher shortages and poor infrastructure. Ghulam Mohammad Public School was founded to fill this equity gap and help ensure the right to education under Article 25-A of Pakistan’s Constitution for marginalized communities in Kasur.
The school was established by my uncles, also my in-laws (I am married to my cousin) -Dr. Mushtaq Paracha and Dr. Habib Jehan. They strongly believed that education is the greatest equalizer in society, the principal path to emerge from poverty, and the best form of Sadqah-e-Jariyah (an ongoing charityin Islam, representing a donation or action that continues to provide benefits to the beneficiaries, and rewards for the donor long after they have passed away). Continuing this work in Kasur is both my duty and honor. In the most difficult of times, this service and work keeps me motivated in life that I too am contributing to Sadqah-e-Jariyah.
The driving motive and mission of our school is The Holy Quran’s emphasis on Ilm (knowledge), and the hadith-“The best of you are those who learn the Quran and teach it”. Kasur’s future depends on educated youth. If we do not invest in children from poor households, we risk losing valuable national talent. As you may have heard Kasur is known as the ‘city of shame’ due to its high crime rates, including murder, rape, kidnapping, and especially high abuse rates and sexual crimes against children.
My family’s primary goal was to provide free or near-free quality education to underprivileged children in Kasur city, where government schools are short in supply and overcrowded,and private schools are un-affordable for majority low-income families who are either laborers, farmers, or daily-wage workers.Our aim is to break the cycle of rural and semi-urban poverty through literacy, critical thinking, and skill-building from primary to matric levels.
Secondary goals of our institute include inculcating discipline, ethics, and civic responsibility alongside academics for the youth of Kasur. We also provide occasional free meals for students on special days, during exams, and for extremely vulnerable children to address malnutrition and improve attendance.Free uniforms, books, and stationery are also provided to children from extremely low-income households as they face immense financial barriers.
Apart from following the local board exam curriculum for Matric and FSc exams,we also offer vocational training and computer literacy programs for senior students, and we regularly organize general health camps and women’s health camps, as these are critically needed to secure jobs and overall wellbeing in the community. Only healthy mothers and families will bring their children to school and additional training is needed to secure jobs, beyond the exam results and transcripts.
So far, our milestones include educating more than 2,000 children from Kasur and surrounding villages, with a matric pass rate of more than 70%.We have also maintained approximately 80% student retention by removing fee barriers, as the school runs entirely on charity, Zakat, and the Sponsor a Child Program.We have a total of 18 classrooms, 1 science lab,1 computer lab, and a library through donor support.
I serve as Chairperson and trustee/patron of Ghulam Mohammad Public School, Kasur. My professional background is in microbiology, and I am also a homemaker. However, my personal commitment has always been toward human development in underserved areas of my country.
Over time, we had to initiate a ‘Sponsor a Child Program’,to cater to more students who we could not fund from family savings. Through this scheme,donors can support a child’s complete education for PKR 50,000 per year. This covers tuition, books, uniform, meals, and healthcare support.Currently, more than 30 children are fully sponsored under the PKR 50,000 per year Sponsor a Child Program by individual and corporate donors.The Sponsor a Child Program is our strongest tool for continuity, but we need at least 50 sponsors to cover 20% of the school’s strength as it stands now (500 students currently).
My role includes fundraising and donor stewardship, including managing the Sponsor a Child Program to ensure predictable and steady financial support for the students.I also provide strategic oversight on curriculum, teacher training, and infrastructure development, with mandatory administrative meetings at least thrice a week. I am also responsible for ensuring complete transparency in Zakat and other donations so that donors continue to trust us. We share quarterly reports with sponsors, which I help finalize and prepare for communication.We also conduct annual audits to ensure financial transparency of donor funding.Advocating for the school with the Punjab Government, Kasur District Administration, and civil society also falls under me and it is important for the school to keep sharing information and communicating with government and other local bodies to share updated information, best practices, legal issues, and community concerns that affect our students.
Recently a sponsor who adopted a girl two years ago, now in Grade 3, from a brick kiln family through the Sponsor a Child Program, talked to the child through video call. The child stood first
in her class and told her sponsor, “I will become a doctor”, to which the sponsor replied that he will fund her through medical university as well and that she must keep studying hard.That is the direct impact of a structured Sponsor a Child Program which keeps donors connected and emotionally involved with their beneficiaries
At the same time there are significant challenges in managing our school.Salaries, utilities, and price of books have increased by more than 40% in the last three years. Kasur also faces higher logistics costs in delivery of supplies, such as transport for textbooks, stationery, furniture, computers, laboratory materials, and maintenance equipment, which places additional pressure on our limited budget.
Qualified teachers often prefer to gain teaching jobs in Lahore city which is nearby, as they get offered better salary packages there. It is difficult to retain qualified and committed teachers in Kasur without dedicating more donor funds to administrative costs and salaries of teachers. However, donors are more interested in sponsoring students and not costs for maintenance of quality.Teachers are our greatest asset. Their ongoing training and timely salaries directly affect learning outcomes of students and satisfaction of teachers themselves.However, we have almost no funds for teacher training and are dependent on other NGOs who might offer free and irregular one-day trainings to teachers.
Similarly, there are many students who come to school hungry and we want to provide them consistent breakfast and lunch, but we can only provide them occasional free meals due to budget limitations. Daily meals would improve quality of study and attendance but for this we need more dedicated donors.On days when we provide free meals, attendance increases by around 15%. Therefore, the difference between occasional and daily meals is a major implementation factor.Full meal coverage would require approximately PKR 1.2 million per month in additional funding.
We also want to introduce smart classrooms, but most of the students in Kasur do not have internet access or devices at home. Several hours of load shedding in Kasur city is common. So, we choose not to invest here, as students are unable to continue with their learning from home or access smart classroom assignments or notes from home, and this creates more frustration for them. For me personally it’s also depressing, because smart classrooms, online skills, and AI is the future.Youth of Pakistan that is deprived of these skills have less opportunities overall to compete in the modern world.
Due to multiple crises in Pakistan, donors for the education sector have shifted their giving toward flood relief or health-based NGOs. The Sponsor a Child Program helps, but we need at least 70 more sponsors for stability.Around 80% of the budget comes from annual Zakat during Ramadan. The Sponsor a Child Program is designed to create more predictable recurring support, but currently only 30 children are sponsored out of more than 500 enrolled students
Then there are the ever rising costs of electricity, security, and paper. One child’s monthly cost now exceeds PKR 6,000, making the PKR 50,000 annual sponsorship not adequate for us, as it rounds off to about PKR 4,000 a month. To sustain the annual sponsorship and encourage donors we do not want to increase the annual asking amount from PKR 50,000.
Another problem is that though we conduct annual third-party audits and send our sponsors individual child progress reports every quarter, there is donor demand for real-time dashboards. Donors are gaining this from other international NGOs that have the money for this. However, we do not have the money to invest in this kind of digital communication
Our effort is to ensure that only deserving children are enrolled, and those from the poorest of poor families. This requires home visits, which are staff-intensive, and again we are running short on staff for this at times or for regular visitation to assess if family conditions may have improved and they can afford some part of their fee, which would allow other deserving students to be sponsored.
In our experience, sustainability is more important than upscale at the moment, as we are risking currently functional, small, and private NGOs from disappearing due to rising costs and erratic donations. The Sponsor a Child model shows that recurring, earmarked giving works better than one-time or annual Zakat. This is why our immediate future target includes scaling up the Sponsor a Child Program through a digital campaign targeting overseas Pakistanis and corporate donors, which can help sustain the school and ensure quality. Our goal is to reach 100 sponsors by 2027.
I have some recommendations for the government of Pakistan/ Punjab. They need to start partnering with private NGOs like ours. For example,they could match donors of the Sponsor a Child Program on a 1:1 basis for schools in needy and poor districts like Kasur. Similarly, partnerships with organizations such as Rizq, Saylani, or Akhuwat could help convert occasional meals into a daily meal program.Corporate companies could adopt 10 children each under their Corporate Social Responsibility programs, and the government should provide tax credits for such sponserships. All this needs to be coordinated and mobilized by local bodies, advocates, and other stakeholders.
To encourage donors,we can also start tracking sponser-funded children against non-sponsored children to show differences in grades, attendance, and retention. This evidence can help attract more sponsors.Transparency builds trust and when sponsors receive the child’s report card, photos, and letters, donor retention is secured up to 90%, compared with approximately 40% of general donors.But we need volunteers to do this for us and other private schools across communities, as we don’t have the administrative staff for this.
To further improve donor confidence in the country the Security Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP)and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR)should create a “Verified Sponsor a Child” category with automatic tax receipts to make the process easier for donors.
Stakeholder engagement can be further secured at a national platform if all charity schools in the country are listed and their per-child costs are declared, so donors can compare schools and sponsor children transparently.
We also need important macro policy changes. The government should provide a 200% tax credit 4 for Sponsor a Child donations to verified schools in districts like Kasur. To tackle the serious case of child malnutrition and stunting Pakistan needs to introduce a School Meal Act for public-private schools in poverty-affected districts, with government subsidies and the contribution of other NGOs and private sector. For example, commonly found bakeries like Gourmet and Cakes and Bakes have the infrastructural presence and money to support schools with meals.
Ultimately, securing education in a populated country like Pakistan with so many rural, remote and under served areas like Kasur cannot happen alone by the government or annual Zakat donations. We need heavy and hybrid coordination to secure structured and predictable giving. We appeal to researchers, policymakers, and donors to visit Kasur. Meet the children whoare being sponsered through our Sponsor a Child Program (PKR 50,000 per year)and see what efforts we are making to transfer children from a brick kiln to a classroom, and eventually to a university. That is the return on investment Pakistan needs.
We are in the process of developing a low-cost website, and meanwhile we have a Facebook Link you can access our updated on:
[1] Khushi, M., Ahmad, S. R., Ahmad, A., Butt, I., Akram, W., & Akhtar, A. (2022). Role of Geo spatial Technology in Crime Mapping & Analysis: A Case Study of District Kasur, Punjab, Pakistan. International Journal of Innovations in Science & Technology, 4(3), 751-762.
[2] Alam, M. A., Raza, A., & Raza, M. O. (2024). The rape and murder of minor girl Zainab: A case study of pedophilic sexual violence in Pakistan. Human Nature Journal of Social Sciences, 5(3), 258-274.
[3] Banuri, S., & Hisam, K. (2026). City of Shame: Crime Signaling and Inverse Deterrence in a Weak State. Available at SSRN 6045234.
[4] A 200% tax credit is a highly aggressive government incentive where the credit amount exceeds the actual cost of an expenditure. Instead of just reducing tax liability by the amount spent (100% credit), a 200% credit would allow a taxpayer to subtract twice the amount of their qualified expenditure from their tax bill, effectively providing a bonus deduction from their taxes. For example, if a taxpayer spends PKR10,000 on the education of a child, they would receive a PKR 20,000 tax credit.