Stitching A Better Tomorrow
A 12-year-old girl in Pakistan who sews shoes to provide for her family gets an education and a path to a better life
Mubeen Yousuf, 12, has been sewing shoes — 12 pairs for less than $2 a day — since she was 6 years old.
The designs and leather are delivered to the single-room house she shares with her parents and three siblings in Kasur, a city in Pakistan. The family shares two beds, keeps food in a tin box instead of a refrigerator, and cooks meals inches from where they sleep. There’s no bathroom. Instead, a moat of open sewage passes outside their makeshift front door.
“I can barely afford to feed my family, let alone educate my children,” says Mubeen’s father, a rickshaw driver.
On a good day he makes $8, but that’s before he deducts fuel costs. He has spent his whole life in a community that covers 1 square mile, where about 26,000 people live.
Mubeen is far from the only child in the area forgoing school to work — in fact, her story is the norm.
Mubeen’s parents weren’t convinced when Feroza Mehta, a teacher who provided free education for a group of 19 working children in the area, knocked on their door offering to educate her.
“At first Mubeen’s mother argued that there wouldn’t be anyone at home to watch the younger children. So I told her that she could bring her siblings along.
“Eventually her mother saw the change in them and was grateful for the work I was doing.” — Feroza Mehta, teacher
Mubeen was only 10 then. “She didn’t even know how to hold a pencil,” Feroza said. “I used to trace the alphabet for her and she wrote over my dotted lines until she could do it herself.”
When USAID partnered with the Alpha Foundation to set up eight learning centers for working children in the area, Mubeen’s parents didn’t hesitate to enroll both her and her sister.
The centers are filled with children as young as 5, many of whom work in factories where they glue crystals onto clothes with little bottles of solution. Some already have weak eyesight because of their painstaking work, said Farwa Abdul Majid, one of the teachers.
The 18-month project aims to prepare working children to enroll in mainstream schools. The project also trains teachers at government schools on how to educate working children.
“Working children are particularly vulnerable to even the slightest punishments because of their traumatized backgrounds. They’re also slower learners and teachers need to be patient with them.”
— Syed Jawad Bukhari, Alpha Foundation’s executive director
Before heading to the center, which opens at noon, Mubeen goes to work with her mother to clean houses in the city. After the center closes at 4 p.m., she goes back to sewing shoes, which often stretches as late into the night as 11 p.m.
Going to the center is the only reprieve in Mubeen’s relentless schedule. “They go to work and get scolded by their employer; they go to clean houses and get yelled at if the floors don’t sparkle; they come home and ask for a treat but their parents don’t have money to spare,” Feroza said.
Each learning center has a hygiene corner with a water tap and a small mirror, where teachers show the children how to wash their hands and comb their hair. “I had no idea that soap was what killed germs before coming here,” said Mubeen. “I went home and taught my sister and brothers what I had learned, too.”
Now that she’s literate, Mubeen has found that she loves to read. She speeds through pages of her Urdu comprehension book whenever she has a rare spare moment at home. At the center, she departs from her usually solemn disposition, to scribble little notes to her new friends. “It’s fun. Besides, I don’t have time to talk to them outside the center.”
“These children have never known fun,” said Waheed Aslam, a project manager at the Alpha Foundation. “We try to give them as many opportunities for joy as possible, from encouraging them to sit and talk in circles to sharing food with their peers.”
The toughest part of transitioning the children from a non-formal to formal school environment, however, is getting their parents on board.
“I regularly meet with the parents and continue emphasizing that educating their children is their key to a better life,” said the teacher, Feroza.
“Every child deserves both an education and a childhood.” — Syed
“These children are getting older before their time,” said Waheed, as he watched them chase each other on their way home from the center. His team’s greatest goal is to instill in each and every one of them a fierce desire to pursue their education and see it through to the end. “They need to want better lives for themselves. That’s the first step.”
The hard work seems to be paying off. When asked why she wants to continue studying, Mubeen looked up from the pile of leather in her lap. Her small hand tugged at a massive needle.
“I want to study because I have a right to. After all, am I not a human, too?” — Mubeen
About the Author
This blog was prepared by staff at USAID’s mission in Pakistan.
