Lyari Girls Café Educational Institute Update:
Lyari Streets are mostly found flooded with men. They are found smoking, playing games or gossiping either at some small gaming walkways or on the footpaths. However, the women of the Lyari are seen making their way towards the newly-built Lyari Girls Café Educational Institute—a café where they study and get vocational training.
The Lyari Girls Café Educational Institute peculiarly named institute is set up on the fourth floor of a residential building and has a big rooftop, which is adorned with beautiful handicrafts and embroidered sheets. The Lyari Girls Café Educational Institute is also furnished with comfortable couches and has board games like carrom and ludo.
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Presently, more than three hundred girls are enrolled in the different courses being offered at the Lyari Girls Café Educational Institute including—English, grooming, Computers, Mehndi application, hairstyling and other skills.
The institute is one of its kind in Lyari Mandhran Mohalla.
Initially, it was extremely difficult to persuade girls to join the café, but now more girls are interested in joining the centre, said Aas Research and Development Organisation (ARADO) President Sultan Mandhro.
Mandhro said Lyari is an area where girls are not usually allowed to leave their homes to study after matriculation. When they step out, it is to work as maids, he added.
He said that the objective of the café is to recreate and develop skills of the violence-affected children and young girls. Another big reason was to bring these children and girls into the mainstream.
One other significant reason behind setting up this café is to provide technological and language access to the girls by teaching them computers and English.
He mentioned that although Lyari is an under-privileged locality, however, their spirit of volunteerism is appreciable—as all the teachers who work in the café are working on voluntary basis.
Lyari Café Project Coordinator Sassi Muhammad Khan said there is no one to encourage children, especially girls, to study. “Lyari Girls Café is the first centre for girls in the area where they can come and learn various skills.”
Khan said Lyari is a place of wonder and worry. “A lot of people work here for the welfare of the community. We have to make our girls stronger so that they also get an education and play their part in the welfare of society.”
The centre is also offering a program for the out-of-school children. Zulaikha Dawood—a social mobiliser at the café said that the future of the children is linked to acquiring education. Dawood further mentioned that when they started to mobilise the parents for letting their children get education none of them showed any interest but eventually with time and pursuance they started sending their children to the café.
Children between the age of five and sixteen years of age are taught English, Urdu and Maths at the café.
ARADO has been involved for ten years in the activities relating the development of the youth in Lyari(Karachi) for making them capable to deal with the altering requirements of the world, Mandhro explained.
Source: Mehran Post
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