Dear Friends,
As we come to the end of our sixteenth year in operation, the Hoshyar Foundation remains strong. While life in Pakistan remains as difficult as ever for many, we can take satisfaction in reporting that there are 1800 students currently enrolled in schools we established and continue to support.
This year the extraordinarily heavy monsoon season caused flooding in over one-third of the country, an area of more than 110,000 square miles, most of which remains lying stagnant. While we were fortunate that none of our schools was severely damaged, many others were either substantially compromised or completely washed away. In the northern areas the Indus River flooded and washed away untold numbers of settlements and homes.
Hoshyar purchased ten tents for girls’ schools in remote Indus Kohistan in a special flood relief effort. We are happy to report that six tents have been erected already. Instruction has resumed despite the difficulties of delivery due to the villages’ remoteness and lack of road access. This keeps hundreds of girls in school whose education would have ended very abruptly otherwise, never to be resumed. Thank you, thank you.
The Al-Hamd School near Lahore has also suffered, but not structurally. Rather, the problem on the plains of Punjab has been water-borne pestilence, most notably dengue fever and malaria. We were fortunate to be able to make a simple, but very effective, intervention here. Part of the flood relief funds you donated has gone to provide individual tubes of mosquito repellent to all 245 students at Al-Hamd, as well as their teachers. One doesn’t contract these diseases if she is not bitten by mosquitoes in the first place!
Further good news:
- 1,029 students have graduated from Hoshyar-sponsored schools
- 282 have completed BA/BS degrees
- 53 have earned diplomas in applied fields
- 264 have joined the workforce
The significance of these outcomes is enormous. Each girl enrolled in one of our schools can live a richer internal life as a result of her access to ideas and letters. Furthermore, she and her family are better protected against unscrupulous actors who prey upon the poor and unlettered. Moreover, these girls will themselves become figures of authority and a resource for others no matter where they find themselves. They can contribute to the physical and spiritual health of their community by having access to a larger world. And they can not only help support their families, but can contribute to the nation by contributing their human capital.
I hope to visit Pakistan come spring 2023 and look forward to sending you updates when I do. In the meantime, we still need to meet our normal obligations for 2023. I remain grateful for your generous support, as always. Our partners always send their thanks and are fully aware of the difference each of you has made in their lives.
With best wishes, as always,
Prof. Carla Petievich
Executive Director
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