World Vision Continues Pakistan Aid

|TOP|International aid and development agency World Vision continues to provide aid to quake-hit, rain-drenched north-west Pakistan.

In addition to the continuous distribution of non-food relief items, the charity has recently set about establishing 52 temporary schools and five new Child Friendly Spaces (CFS’s) in the remote mountainous areas of the Saraash and Siran valleys, having conducted livelihood, child protection and education surveys.

Most of the infrastructure in the Saraash valley of Balakot, and Nawazabad and Bassu area of Mandagucha in the Siran valley was completely destroyed in the October earthquake.

Richard Mukhwana, Child Protection Officer for World Vision Pakistan said, “We have targeted about 80 schools for reconstruction and expansion purposes for which negotiation is in progress with government officials. But for the time being, World Vision is working on establishing 10 temporary schools in the Saraash valley and 42 in Jabouri, Sachan Kalan, Nawazabad, Panjool, Mandagucha and Bassu areas of the Siran valley.”

|AD|Saraash valley- consisting of Saraash, Saraash Moughal and Khait Saraash- is home to some 10,000 people and four tribes. Around 400 people, primarily children, from 300 families lost their lives to the earthquake in Saraash alone.

“As many as 250 students were enrolled at the Saraash government boys’ primary school, of which 35 died and 80 were injured when the double storey building of the school collapsed,” explained Arabic schoolteacher Mohammad Farooq from Khait, whose grade three daughter Azmat Bibi died in the Khait government primary school.

Miraculously, the Saraash government girls’ middle school only suffered partial damage and all of the girls made it out of their classrooms alive.

“Besides setting up ten temporary schools, we are establishing five CFS’s in the Saraash valley, in view of the vulnerability of children,” said Syed Nauman Shah, World Vision’s Child Protection Field Coordinator.

“We are also focusing on the Balakot and Gari Habibullah government high schools where hundreds of children were killed in the October earthquake,” Amer Shahzad, Adolescence Programme Coordinator for World Vision said.

"We recently held focus group discussions with the students, teachers and parents and heard that 22 graves in which 72 students were buried in the Balakot school are a constant source of distress for the students,” he said.

World Vision will organise a remembrance ceremony in the school for the students to remember their peers lost in the earthquake.

In other news, World Vision, has in conjunction with the Pakistani aid agency ODC (Organisation for Development Coordination), answered the plea for help from tribal leaders in the Black Mountain region of Kala Daka, beyond the North West Frontier Province, Pakistan.

The people of the area are traditionally fiercely independent, living in remote communities high in the foothills of the Himalayas. Over 104,000 people in the area have gone without aid since the Earthquake on 8th October caused devastation to their homes.