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The Full Story
OUR JOURNEY
Many exciting and transformative initiatives are worthy of admiration. GVS (now GVE) was inspired by those who are genuinely concerned about making a difference in the lives of children and their families in remote rural areas where opportunities are almost non-existent.
THE INSPIRATION
Our parental village was one of these neglected communities. It did not take much to persuade the Cheema family members to donate some of our ancestral land towards establishing a school.
It remained a dream until an opportunity was provided to me by Nord Anglia, a company I worked for as an Ofsted inspector. Nord Anglia won a major contract to nurture giftedness in Saudi Arabia.
Nord Anglia approached me to come out of retirement and lead this project in KSA. My immediate response was …. I’m too old to take on such a huge responsibility. However my dearest friend and life partner Nusrat Khan-Cheema had other ideas. Why not take on the challenge, she said and see if we can raise enough funds for our dream project?
THE DREAM
Taking the task on as Director of the King Abdul Aziz Foundation for Giftedness for Nord Anglia and working in partnership with MAWHIBA meant Nusrat & I had to move lock stock and barrel to KSA.
I calculated that my salary over a period of two years may cover the cost of constructing GVS in Pakistan. The dream started taking shape.
We spent two exhausting and challenging years in a small apartment in the capital city of Riyadh. Nusrat stopped all and any of my efforts to spend more than the least amount on ourselves …. Her reminder was always …. We don’t need a small car, or any of the ‘comfort’ items … and in any case our intention was to donate every penny we make towards our dream project!!!!. I lost the argument each time, thank God.
We were back in UK after two years even though there was considerable pressure on me by Saudi and Nord Anglia colleagues to carry on for a few more years ….. I was not tempted because I was exhausted and with Nusrat’s help and support we embarked on finding practical ways to make our dream come true.
SEARCHING FOR A PARTNER AND RESEARCHING FOR EFFECTIVE MODELS
We looked at several wonderful projects including Citizens Foundation, Muslim Hands, Read Foundation and others who were doing a great job in providing much needed education to deprived and disadvantaged children in rural areas of AJK and Pakistan. However their underlying philosophy appeared to be – “something is better than nothing”. They established hundreds and thousands of schools and successfully provided mass education.
I was already involved with Kashmir Education Foundation as an Exec Director both in UK (Registered Charity) and in AJK & Pakistan as an advisor, volunteer and consultant. My regular contact was with Major General (Rtd) Rahim Khan on the KEF projects. He and his Khan brothers had donated their ancestral land to start the Pearl Valley Public School project in Rawlakot (AJK).
PVPS was a huge success in every way. Their philosophy was different. They wanted to provide the best possible quality of education to selected but talented children from disadvantaged families in remote villages.
Potentially Talented Children from poor families were selected by ‘independent’ education psychologists from Dr. Alama Iqbal University to attend KEF schools. The outcome was a radical change.
More than 80% of the boys and girls from KEF schools were successfully entering into the most popular universities and Higher Education Institutes. Not only that, they were being sponsored by local philanthropists and were getting scholarships to continue in their journey.
We decided to seek a partnership with KEF. We have never regretted that decision. Maj Gen Rahim Khan gave his personal support and with his considerable experience the Global Village School started its construction in 2010 near our parents Village Sang Khurd, Tehsil & District Chakwal.
GLITCHES & CHALLENGES
Maj Gen (Rtd) Rahim Khan fell ill during the construction of GVS and could not keep up with his weekly visits to supervise the work in progress.
The contractor and his team slackened and although the GVS building was completed by 2012, the funding from our side and the lack of adequate supervision from KEF meant that the building could not be handed over by the contractor until his contracted amount was cleared.
We had run out of cash and KEF Board of Directors felt that they could not take on this 4th school without adequate funding. We were stuck but Nusrat and I never gave up. The reason for our strong sense of confidence was a whole lot of back up support that we have had from family and friends throughout.
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The contractor refused to hand over the keys to what then seemed like a “white elephant” in the middle of nowhere.
We had already sponsored three girl graduates from our villages to go for a year long residential “professional training and personal development” programme at KEF’s College of Teachers Education in nearby Basali Village off GT Road via Rawat.
These trainees approached us and said they would like to start helping children to learn without any payment for their services if we could open the GVS building for them.
After long discussions and complex negotiations within a very unfamiliar context, Nusrat and I eventually, agreed to give our personal guarantee for full payment to the contractor as soon as possible but within no more than three years if he would let us make use of the completed building.
There were many other challenges running parallel to the above including our own struggle to get to know and understand the local traditions, cultural norms and values. We never wanted to impose our own concept of “best” educational provision on the beneficiaries without serious and deep consultations.
Consultation meetings were arranged with the help of some elders in each of the five villages. This has been a collaborative adventure and our intention to empower the communities has never wavered. It has been and continues to be a huge learning curve for us.
THE DREAM TEAM
The collaborative and interactive consultation meetings proved difficult but informative. Nusrat and I had a lot to take into consideration after listening to the feedback. Some of the feedback was extremely difficult to digest. For example the demand for a completely free charitable school was not what we had in mind.
At our age, we needed to take into account the fact that we may not be alive long enough to support such a proposition and in any case we did not have the financial means to support such a free charitable initiative.
We always had sustainability in mind. In the long term we had envisaged that the local communities would take ownership and be empowered to confidently define the nature of education that helps their children to achieve their full potential.
We concentrated on the more positive outcomes from the consultations and we began purchasing the essential teaching and learning materials towards a start date in April 2014. GVS began with 24 children of different ages and the four teachers who kindly offered their services.
So began the start of our exciting dream come true – at last. We saw great potential in one of these volunteers and decided to give her a lead position and soon afterwards appointed her as Principal.
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The Principal and her teachers proved to be a “Dream Team’”. So described by the Principal herself at the inauguration meeting with the parents. Her full speech appears in our first brochure printed in November 2014.
PROGRESS TOWARDS FREE EDUCATION FOR THE DESERVING STUDENTS
During the first two years we had agreed after several compromises to accept only those children whose families were prepared to invest two thousand Pakistani Rupees per month.
My professional proposition during consultation was that parents should contribute at least three thousand Pakistani Rupees per month in order to ensure that the income and expenditure columns may result in balancing out in five to six years when the full strength of 420 available places are filled by students.
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After two years we began to consider subsidising families with financial difficulty and asked the Principal and her Dream Team who knew the families in each of the 5 villages to make recommendations based on their assessments to help us make some decisions. In January 2016 we decided to offer 10 student places from deserving families based on the recommendations made by the Principal and her Dream Team.
This step proved controversial because virtually all families began to pressurise us and the Principal to reduce the financial “burden” on them. We have not come out of that predicament even today (April 2022). The pressure from the families is still on.
