Pakistan Initiative for Education

Abstract

Many people believe that the positive change in Pakistan can be brought through educating the citizens. With 56% of adult population being literate and the country ranked as 160 out of 177 countries in literacy by United Nations Development Program, the progress in education is still far from being satisfactory. Adding insult to the injury is the fact that the dropout rate from schools in significantly high; one of the main reasons behind this phenomena is poverty. Talent is going waste because students cannot afford the education and increase in illiterate population is giving birth to various social problems. Government departments and several NGOs are carrying out projects across the country to help the poor families for supporting education of their children. While people can donate to public and private organizations for supporting the deserving students, there is no platform that provides the facility of supporting the deserving student directly by the donor anywhere in the country. There are people inside the country and abroad who would like to fund the education of children directly but do not have enough information on how to do it. Further, because of trust deficit or because of their particular preferences, they may not donate it through an organization and would like to monitor the outcome of their donations. This project “Pakistan Initiative for Education (PIE)” is aimed at promoting education in Pakistan through community involvement. The idea is to connect donor with the bright and deserving students in the far flung areas of the country in addition to the metropolitan cities. Our proposed system will collect data about students from different schools, colleges & universities across the country and make it available for the donors. Our system will also offer different options of one to one communication between donor and student depending on availability of required infrastructure. A donor will be able to donate directly to the students. Further, the system will facilitate the donor to donate based on his/her preferences. The system will also keep the donor updated on the overall progress of the student. Education plays a key role in the development of any nation but has not been given due importance in our country. There is a need of active community involvement in promoting education. This idea will improve literacy rate in Pakistan and eradicate several social evils. We believe that we can help thousands of students in becoming educated and useful citizens of the country through implementing this idea.