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FCF Project Partner Family Educational Services Foundation (FESF), Karachi, Pakistan
Representatives of Family Educational Services Foundation (FESF) in Karachi were awarded a grant by the Provincial Government at a ceremony attended by 25 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). These organizations were chosen from amongst all those in Sind province, under the Provincial Government’s new scheme of providing support to worthwhile projects in the region focused on making a difference.
FCF Project Manager Richard Geary presented a short overview of their Deaf Reach program, and shared about how this funding will go towards the set up of a new ‘Deaf Reach School and Skills Training Center’ in Sukkur, a rural city 8 hours outside of Karachi, FESF’s 4th School for the Deaf in the country.
This government sponsorship program is a new and innovative initiative to encourage public/private partnerships with the purpose of improving services for those in need, especially in the field of education and social uplift. The chairman of this committee, a very proactive man who is responsible for the initiative, had earlier visited the FESF school in Karachi and was very impressed with the set up, program and ultimate good results, and then brought by others of his department. They explained that they’d like to use our set up as a model that can be replicated in the 20 government institutions that are under their mandate, going so far as to suggest the possibility of FESF taking on the administration/management of the same.
As it so happens, Ali, the principal of our Deaf Reach branch in Karachi, who enrolled in our deaf program some 12 years back, is from Sukkur, the location of this fourth Deaf Reach school, and the day we received this grant was his birthday. A fitting birthday present indeed, and a story of yet another deaf man from a rural area finding success, and now returning years later to the respect of his peers.