Mushtaq Chappra and the TCF April 2015

Two years ago my friend Mushtaq Chappra asked me to visit him in Karachi.
As his house guest, I was shown amazing hospitality and had a really good time.

When I showed some interest in his pet project the Citezens Foundation, he took me on a tour.

And I was gobsmacked.

The concept is based on the refusal to wait for the government to deliver education to the poor.

Mushtaq used his organisational acumen to simply get the job done.

He put up the first school out of his own  pocket.
It was designed to be world class and it was.

Really fancy buildings, female teachers, so that the coed classes would be more palatable in super conservative Pakistan.

The target was children born into the slums. Kids who often had to work  to make a living.
The school allowed them to work half of the day and still get a good  education.

When this model was a hit,  the world saw this, and  he received additional funding from Pakistanis living in the first world.

The initiative was called the  "watering your roots" initiative.

With the additional support they went on to repeat the experiment in other slums all over the country and beyond.

All bright and sparkly. Really top class

This year they opened their 1000th school.

Yes you read that correctly and they have 140,000 students enrolled at the present.

And "hell Yes" one man can make a difference.

Mohammed Parak 2015.