Project location: Mardan, Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa Province
Project start and end dates: 1st April 2015 – 31st December, 2015
Project description
Assisting Afghan refugees for decades the local communities have remained neglected. This has created disharmony between host and refugee communities. Host communities often also complain that Afghan communities have taken-over their businesses in urban as well as rural areas of the province. Afghan communities on the other hand blame local communities of grabbing all the aid and funds allocated for Afghan communities. These perceptions have led to diminishing cohesion and trust between local and Afghan communities, which need to be addressed through adopting multiple measures to foster and forge harmony for sustainable peaceful coexistence.
BEFARe proposes to address this distrust and lack of confidence between local and refugee communities by intervening with an innovative program that provides an equal opportunity to children from Pakistani communities hence addressing the reasons of distrust and disharmony between both communities. BEFARe with the support of UNHCR under RAHA (Refugee Affected and Hosting Areas) initiative is implementing a 9 months project gearing at increasing school capacity through new infrastructure, rehabilitation as well as WATSAN needs and school supplies. In addition to rehabilitating the damaged structures, demolition of old, construction of new classrooms, washrooms with provision of furniture the intervention will reorganize and strengthen PTA/PTCs already formed for the supervision and further sustainability of the proposed intervention. Social mobilizes will arrange sessions on awareness raising on participatory hygiene and sanitation techniques (PHAST) for students. In order to bring the Urdu language reading and comprehension skills of the students commensurate with their grade level, ToT for the teachers will be arranged to improve their skills in overcoming the linguistic deficiency among students at these schools. The trained teachers will provide weekly lessons for six continuous months. The post training assessment will be compared with pre-test results to check the improvement among students