Local
communities of Hansa Colony in G-8/1 and Ali Pur Frash had established
“Community Education Forums ” to raise awareness among communities and to
promote equitable secondary level education while focusing particularly on
female education.

These
forums were established at formal meetings, facilitated by Sustainable
Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and held among the pastors and ward members
of Hansa colony and Ali Pur Frash Town on friday and saturday
respectively.

Gulbaz
Ali Khan, Senior Research Associate opened the discussion with the community
members by highlighting the rights and entitlements bestowed under the article
25 A of the constitution of the country. He briefly highlighted the importance
of education for character building and formation of a healthy society.
Community members endorsed the importance of the education for their children
who are marginalized due to the multiple obstacles culminating from public and
community as well. Thy also highlighted the ingrained issues of religious
discrimination, cultural and attitudinal biases within the educational system.
The community was also exposed to the social accountability concept. . With the
mutual consent of communities, It unanimously decided to formulate community
education forums which will work for educational awareness, feedback to the
government and for all those issues forcing their children to remain out of
school.

Sustainable
Development Policy institute (SDPI) in collaboration with Affiliated Network
for Social Accountability-South Asian Region (ANSA-SAR) is implementing a
social accountability programme on removing the rural-urban and gender gaps in
the lower secondary education in slum areas of the federal capital. Hansa
colony and Ali Pur Frash are the selected slums areas based on the high
prevalence of out of school children, especially the girls.

The
goal of the programme is to address the issues of embedded corruption and
mismanagement in the fund allocation, lack of awareness in the marginalized
community regarding the importance of education, social and cultural norms that
discourage the female participation and poverty that encourage child labor. All
these factors are contributing to the prevalence of drop out and increasing the
number of out of school children.

Social
accountability enables the citizen to provide feedback to the public to improve
the service delivery by identifying the areas for improvement. It also enhances
the community and public interaction and communication and work as enabler to
improve the governance at all tiers of government.