Taking Charge: HBKU Prize Rewards Georgetown Students for Helping the poor

Haroon Yasin, a freshman at Georgetown, recently accepted the Hamad bin Khalifa University (HBKU) award for best service organization within HBKU on behalf of Akhuwat-e-Awam.

Akhuwat-e-Awam is a student-created and student-run group that has successfully overseen the education of poor children in Pakistan through a wholly volunteer-led school. The group’s name is Persian and means “Brotherhood of the People.”

The founding members of Akhuwat-e-Awam are students at the Georgetown and Carnegie-Mellon campuses at Education City. It soon became apparent that opening their own primary school in a complex environment overseas required a committed and dedicated body to oversee administrative needs, curriculum needs, and any planning of future projects.

With the goal of meeting those essentials so necessary to education, Haroon and 19 other Georgetown students started the campus service organization of the same name to supervise Akhuwat-e-Awam’s ambitious plans to provide education centers in Pakistani communities where none previously existed.

“In Pakistan, in December 2011, we opened our first school,” explains Haroon. “It is entirely student-led. So far we have educated 70 children at the primary level for over an entire year. The club at Georgetown handles all the administrative affairs of the school.”

The school provides books, copies, pencils and food for all the children who enroll in the school. The language of instruction is English. Due to the first school’s success, the Georgetown club has found an additional location and secured the finances so that a second school can open this summer.

“We are recognized by the government of Pakistan as an official education institution,” added Haroon. “When we think the model can be duplicated easily then we will try to replicate at a very quick pace, perhaps every four or five months. This is essentially the work and purpose of the club at Georgetown.”

Amidst their success the students have learned that thorny issues do arise. During a successful pen-pal campaign between the multi-national club members at Georgetown and the students at the Akhuwat-e-Awam school, historical realities reared their head when a young student’s parents withdrew their child from the primary school due to the nationality of the student’s pen-pal. The Georgetown club put the pen-pal program in hiatus to allow time to analyze the realities on the ground and to assess the challenges the school faces.

There are many volunteers. Some are Georgetown students and many are in Pakistan. At one point 80 to 90 volunteers were involved with the project. The current goal is to spread the word and to attract volunteers. The group’s Facebook page has been very helpful with that.

“We realized very early that it wasn’t the money that would keep us running for the long-term,” said Haroon, “but the people.”