The Kaghan Memorial School Project of The Kaghan Memorial Trust

The Earthquake
The northern areas of Pakistan were devastated by an earthquake of magnitude 7.7 on the Richter scale on the morning of October 8, 2005. This was the most devastating natural disaster in the history of the country. Official reports of infrastructure damage and of loss of life put the death toll at over 77,000, with another 2.8 million people rendered homeless. The total cost of reconstruction was estimated by the Government of Pakistan and International Aid agencies to be in the range of USD 6 to 7 billion. While these figures of death and destruction are in themselves monumental, the biggest tragedy was that nearly half of the casualties in this disaster were children killed when the roofs of their schools collapsed on them on that school morning. Hundreds of schools in the affected areas were reduced to rubble and as newspaper headlines screamed over the next few days, a whole generation was lost in a matter of seconds.

About the Kaghan Memorial Trust

The Kaghan Memorial Trust (KMT) is a non-profit Charitable Trust registered in Islamabad Pakistan in January 2006 in the aftermath of the earthquake. The sole immediate objective of the trust is to establish a school in the Kaghan Valley of Northern Pakistan that will offer a first-class education to children of this severely hit region. This Kaghan Memorial School is dedicated to the memory of the thousands of children who lost their lives to the earthquake. KMT was established by three friends, all members of civil society, who wanted to play their part in helping with the long term rehabilitation of the Kaghan Valley. Since its inception, other concerned members of society wanting to support the cause of the Trust have been co-opted as trustees. Trustees are selected based on their commitment and on their capacity to help strengthen the trust. The KMT board can have a maximum of nine trustees at any point in time.

Mission Statement
Supporting sustainable long-term development in the earthquake-affected Kaghan Valley in Northern Pakistan by establishing a school that will provide free education of a high standard to children from the valley.

The Target Region

The Kaghan Valley is roughly 160 km long with a population of approximately 300,000 prior to the earthquake of October 8. Administratively, the valley is part of the Balakot sub-district (Tehsil) of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan with its headquarters in the town of Balakot. Balakot, had a pre-quake population of roughly 30,000. Before October 8, 2005, Kaghan was already one of the most underdeveloped regions of Pakistan with a majority of its population barely living at subsistence levels. The earthquake made things exponentially worse for these people. The earthquake rendered Balakot into a heap of debris with virtually no building left standing or undamaged. Estimates of losses in Balakot and its Kaghan Valley stood at approximately 15,000 dead, 300 schools destroyed, 30 hospitals and Basic Health Units leveled, 30,000 houses collapsed or rendered uninhabitable and 240,000 people left homeless. The site where Balakot once stood has since been converted into one of the two major hubs for earthquake relief work; the other centre being the town of Muzaffarabad in Pakistani administered Kashmir. Reconstruction work in these destroyed towns and valleys is underway.

Project Description
Overseen by KMT, the Kaghan Memorial School Project can be broadly categorized into five major imperatives, each of which is briefly described as follows:

Imperative 1: Land Acquisition

Finding a suitable site for the school was the first challenge faced by the Trust. The earthquake left many areas in the mountainous valley in a geologically unstable condition, with faults and fissures even visible to the naked eye on numerous mountain sides. A priority was therefore to find a site that would be as safe as possible from landslides and also in the case of future earthquakes. A second prerogative was to have the site located in an area that would be conveniently accessible to as many villages as possible. Finding a site that satisfied both of these considerations proved to be a considerable challenge, and it took the Trust as long as a year to locate such location in Kawai, a village situated approximately 22 km north of Balakot on the main Kaghan road. In January 2007 KMT acquired 50 Kanals (6.25 Acres) of this land for the Main Campus of the school from its local owners on a 99 year lease. Additional land for a second campus has been earmarked in the vicinity for Kawai. This will be acquired by the end of 2009.

Imperative 2: Development Planning

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Planning work on the project started immediately following the acquisition of the land. Activities included conducting topographical and geological surveys of the land and mapping it, developing architectural plans for the school, and identifying and recruiting contractors to construct the buildings and to develop related infrastructure. The design that was developed for the Kaghan Memorial School as a result of these activities envisages the division of the institution into three distinct sub-schools, divided into two campuses:

The Main Campus

The Main Campus of the Kaghan Memorial School houses the Junior School and the Senior School for Girls. Several facilities such as the library, cafeterias, teacher residences and grounds on this campus are shared by both schools. Other structures such as classrooms, staff rooms, laboratories and special activity rooms are exclusive to each school. Brief descriptions of both the schools are provided as follows: The Junior School The Junior School consists of six class levels ranging from Kindergarten to grade Five. Each level comprises of two co-educational classrooms with a capacity of thirty children per class. The school therefore has a maximum capacity of 360 children, half of whom will be girls and the other half boys. The Junior Schools two academic buildings each contain 6 classrooms, a staff room, a computer room and an arts room. The Senior School for Girls The plans for this school provide for eight single-section classes for girls ranging from grades Six to A-Levels (grade thirteen). Each of the eight classrooms has a seating capacity of 30 girls, translating to a total capacity of 240 girls for the school. These classrooms are all housed in one academic building. This school also has three science laboratories, one each for Physics, Chemistry and Biology, two computer rooms, one arts room and a staff room. The Library and Administration Block is the central building on campus. This two-level structure has administrative offices on the lower level and the schools main library on the upper level. Teacher residences consist of two bedroom cottages with attached bathrooms and a shared living room. Each cottage houses two teachers and all teachers share communal kitchen and dining facilities, a gym and a common room.

The Senior Boys Campus

This campus, also located in the vicinity of the village Kawai, will house the Senior School for Boys. This school will provide boarding facilities to its students, and it is envisaged that all children enrolled in it will be full time boarders. As in the Senior School for Girls, this school will have eight single-section classes covering grades Six to A-Levels (Grade Thirteen), providing a total capacity of 240 children. The campus will also house administrative offices, science laboratories, computer rooms, teacher residences, boarding facilities for the students, and playgrounds. The teacher residences will be developed on the same lines as those on the Main Campus. The boarding facilities in this school will consist of four residential buildings, each accommodating 60 children. Each building will contain six dormitories, common activity rooms, a dining hall and kitchen and other required boarding amenities. Principal architectural and structural drawings for the Main Campus were completed in the summer of 2007. Minor modifications or additions may be introduced if needed as the project progresses. Plans for the Senior School for Boys will be developed by the end of 2009 as construction work on that campus is scheduled to begin in 2010.

Imperative 3: Construction and Commissioning

Construction work on the Junior School and other allied buildings on the Main Campus started in March, 2007. This work is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2008. Six temporary classrooms have been constructed in the interim at a safe distance from the main construction sites to allow for the first classes to launch in the spring of 2008. These classes will move out of the temporary rooms and into the main Junior School academic buildings in the spring of 2009. Work on the Senior School for Girls and the Senior School for Boys will commence in 2010 and shall be completed by the end of 2011. Classes in both these schools are scheduled to begin in the spring of 2012.

Imperative 4: Operations - Running the School

Teachers and Staff
The management and running of the school are the responsibility of a dedicated staff of administrators and teachers recruited specifically for this purpose by KMT. To ensure that the quality of education offered at the school is on a par with the best private schools in the country, KMT has arranged for teachers to come from abroad as volunteers for a minimum period of 2 years each. The Trustees of KMT have committed to this project on a voluntary basis, and they feel that the best guarantee for attracting good teachers to a remote rural area in Pakistan lies in the identification and recruitment of teachers who share a similar interest in volunteering their services to the cause of spreading education amongst underprivileged children. The prime motivator for any
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teacher coming to teach at this school must be a desire to help these children, rather than an interest in personal employment. The Trust and School provides room and board facilities to its teachers, supplemented by a monthly stipend to meet day to day expenses. This policy towards recruitment of teaching staff is at the core of the concept behind this school. Non-teaching staff at the school are all recruited on full time basis by KMT at prevailing local salary scales.

Curriculum
The Kaghan Memorial School will provide education based on the British model, leading eventually to A-levels certification from a recognized educational testing authority in the United Kingdom. To start with, however, special curriculum has been selected for the Junior school keeping in mind the social realities of the targeted region and its children. While deliberating on the syllabus, the curriculum development task team understood that whereas the objective of the school was to give its children a modern and broad based education, the approach towards introducing these children to such modern teaching methods would have to be different from that used in other parts of the world. It was agreed that a specially customized curriculum and teaching methods would be needed for at least the initial couple of years as the children in question would in all probability have extremely limited exposure to most of the concepts and experiences that may be taken for granted when dealing with children in other more developed parts of the world including major urban centres in Pakistan. The first version of such a tailor-made curriculum and teaching framework has been prepared for the Junior School, and the teaching team will evolve and improve this model through practical classroom experiences over the first few years until a truly pragmatic and effective system is finally developed for the children of Kaghan. This specialized teaching model will transition to more conventional methods in the higher classes.

Special Programmes
In addition to education, the school will also endeavor to address other pressing requirements of its children. In particular, the trustees of KMT realize that the nutritional intake of the children in the Kaghan valley is well below desired levels, and that this directly hampers their mental and physical development. To address this problem, the school will serve two nutritionally sound meals to its children on every school day. Other programmes aimed at helping the children and their families may be introduced by the Trust over the years, depending upon the need for such interventions and the resources available to KMT in the future.

Expansion
For the first twelve years of operations, the school will expand by one grade (two classrooms) per year as the students of the highest grade progressively graduate to the next level. This expansion will stop once the first batch of students reaches the final year of A-levels (Grade 13). Upon completion of the expansion process, the Kaghan Memorial School will accommodate a total of 840 students, spread over two campuses, three subschools, fourteen grades and twenty four classrooms.

Imperative 5 Fundraising
Last but not least, fundraising is a critical priority for the Trust on which all other activities depend. Finances for building the school are being raised by KMT through an extensive fundraising effort. The fundraising programme is being strengthened, diversified and institutionalized over time, with the objective of developing a multifaceted fund generation programme that will cater to the construction and running expenses of the school. By and large, the main focus of KMTs fundraising efforts is on soliciting contributions from institutions and individuals, and on the organization of various fundraising events. Details on donation options are provided in the Help Support our Activities section later on in this document. As part of its self-help efforts, KMT organizes a range of fundraising activities each year to generate finances for the school. These activities have included but are not limited to: sporting events, musical events, charity dinners and community fundraising drives organized in collaboration with various schools and colleges. Most notably amongst its fundraising events, KMT has organized a series of several international cycle races in Pakistan, including the Tour of the Karakurrams and the Tour of The Himalayas International Mountain Bike races, and the Tour of Islamabad International Road Cycle Race. These races are organized by KMT on an annual basis, and they feature as many as forty to fifty international cyclists from ten to twelve countries in addition to local Pakistani teams. The cyclists that have participated in past races have included several World Champions and National Champions of their respective countries in various cycling events. These world-class athletes come all the way to Pakistan every year, without any expectation of prize money, just to help KMT raise money for its school. Several of them have developed deeper affiliations with the Trust and they act as its ambassadors in their home countries. An updated calendar of the Trusts scheduled fundraising events is available on the KMT website.

Looking to the Future

The Kaghan Memorial Trust is dedicated to developing the Kaghan Memorial School into an institution of excellence where underprivileged children are able to get world class schooling free of cost. Recognizing the fact that the children who eventually graduate from this school will still be poor and will in all probability not be able to afford higher education, the Trustees of KMT have plans for establishing a scholarship fund once construction work on both campuses is completed. This fund will sponsor the university expenses of Kaghan Memorial School graduates who manage to get admission in universities in Pakistan and even abroad. The ultimate objective of the Trust is to take responsibility for the complete education of the children enrolled in its school, right up to university level. This is important in order to ensure that the children who get a start in the school have a real chance at achieving their potential and at making what they want of their lives.

Project Justification
The large-scale destruction in the earthquake affected areas of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir resulted in a genuine need for reconstruction and rehabilitation projects of all types in these regions. Priority sectors that need immediate attention include roads and communications, health, education, housing, water and sanitation projects, and administrative infrastructure. Numerous international and Pakistani agencies and organizations are working in different parts of these affected regions on one or more of these priorities. KMT has opted to focus on establishing this school because its trustees consider education to be the most reliable vehicle for the sustainable development of any community. KMT believes that a good school education will allow the children of Kaghan to compete for places in the best universities of the country, eventually leading to employment prospects that their previous generation could never have conceived of having. Each child given an opportunity for such an education can become an agent for change for an entire family in the future. This prospect alone is justification enough for the Kaghan Memorial School Project.

Budget Summary
A breakup of the estimated costs of constructing and running the Main Campus is given as follows:

Main Campus Projected Construction Costs

Approximate costs leading up to the launch of the Junior School in 2008 Approximate additional costs for finishing construction work on the Main Campus by the end of 2009 Total Cost for Completing the Main Campus Rs. 18 million (US$ 300,000) Rs. 45 million (US$ 750,000) Rs. 63 Million (US$ 1.05 million)

These construction and startup costs do not include the cost of land acquired for the Main Campus, valued at approximately Rs. 10 million (US$ 167,000), which has been acquired by KMT on a 99 year lease basis. The annual lease cost of this land is included in the operational budget of the school given below.

Main Campus Projected Annual Operational Expenditure

Approx. annual costs, 2008 Approx. annual costs, 2009 Approx. annual costs, 2010 Rs. 6 million (US$ 100,000) Rs. 9 million (US$ 150,000) Rs. 12 million (US$ 200,000)

Figures given above are subject to change as actual costs incurred by the project will vary from these initial estimates. For budgeting purposes, however, these calculations give a reasonably good approximation of the projected expenses associated with the Main Campus.

The construction and operational budgets for the Senior Boys Campus will be separate from the costs above. These will be prepared later once the land is acquired and the designs for that campus are prepared.

A Note from the Trustees

All things said and done, we the Trustees of KMT are absolutely clear that we want the Kaghan Memorial School to provide the same standard of education to the children of Kaghan that we expect for our own children studying in some of the more exclusive schools in this country and abroad. We refuse to subscribe to conventional practice that condemns children from underprivileged families to a second rate education just because their families lack the money to afford better. The Kaghan Memorial School is not about making the numbers in terms of filling classrooms; it is about giving children quality education that will help them become confident and competent young individuals with a real chance at changing their lives and the lives of their families for the better

Help Support Our Activities

The Kaghan Memorial Trust has developed an elaborate donation and sponsorship programme to cover construction and commissioning costs of the buildings and to later on ensure that the school can rely on a stable flow of funds for its operation. This programme is designed to be as flexible and as varied as possible so as to provide a range of contribution options to individuals and institutions that may want to assist in the construction and running of the school. Details on how you can help are provided as follows:

General Donations
Sponsors and donors may contribute to the school by sending their donations to the Kaghan Memorial Trust. Whereas our immediate priority is to arrange funds for construction and expansion of the school, donors may specify how they want their contribution spent if they prefer their funds being used for non-construction purposes.

Large Donors Programme

Individuals and corporate entities wishing to make relatively large contributions towards the building of the school can also sponsor the construction of specific facilities by choosing one or more of the options listed below. Facilities thus sponsored will be named after their respective donors. 1. Donate an office For a contribution of Rs. 600,000 (US$ 10,000), one administrative
office will be named after the donor;

2. Donate a classroom For a contribution of Rs. 900,000 (U$ 15,000), one classroom will
be named after the donor;

3. Donate a teachers residential cottage For a contribution of Rs. 1,200,000 (US$

20,000), one of the residential cottages for teachers (housing two teachers) will be named after the donor;

4. Donate a medical room For a contribution of Rs. 1,200,000 (US$ 20,000), one of the
schools two medical rooms will be named after the donor;

5. Donate a dormitory For a contribution of Rs. 1,500,000 (US$ 25,000), one residential
dormitory in the Senior School for Boys (housing 10 children) will be named after the donor;

6. Donate our grounds For a contribution of Rs. 1,800,000 (US$ 30,000), one of the
schools playgrounds will be named after the donor;

7. Donate our science laboratories For a donation of Rs. 3,000,000 (US$ 50,000), one of
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the schools six science laboratories will be named after the donor;

8. Donate our computer rooms For a contribution of Rs. 3,000,000 (US$ 50,000), one of
the schools computer rooms will be named after the donor;

9. Donate our library For a contribution of Rs. 4,500,000 (US$ 75,000), one of the
schools two libraries will be named after the donor;

10. Donate a hostel The boarding facilities planned for the Senior School for Boys will
consist of four hostel buildings each housing 60 children. Donors have the option of contributing the entire construction costs of one of these buildings consisting of 6 dormitories, dining facilities, a common room, and other required infrastructure. For a contribution of Rs. 9,000,000 (US$150,000), one entire hostel building will be named after the donor.

Sponsor a Child
The Kaghan Memorial Trust is soliciting commitments from friends and supporters for sponsoring the educational expenses of the children enrolled in its school. A contribution of Rs. 30,000 (US$ 500) per year will cover the educational expenses of one student. All contributions made under this programme will be used to finance the schools educational programme. The progress reports of each sponsored child will be sent to his or her sponsor on a bi-annual basis.

Become an Advocate of the Kaghan Memorial School

Individuals around the world who would like to play a role in helping raise funds for this project can apply to become Advocates of the Kaghan Memorial School. Selected Advocates are issued letters declaring their affiliation with the Trust and authorizing them to solicit contributions on its behalf. Donations collected by Advocates are in the form of cheques, money orders or bank drafts made in the name of The Kaghan Memorial Trust. The Trust maintains regular contact with all Advocates to keep them updated on developments relating to the school. All donations and offers for assistance, irrespective of their value or nature, are welcome. We depend on the generosity of our supporters to make the Kaghan Memorial School project a success. Individuals or organizations wanting to donate to this project may contact us at the following address:

The Kaghan Memorial Trust

House #1, Old Firing Range Drive Main Bani Gala Road Bani Gala Islamabad, Pakistan Phone: (0092) 0300 8551322 E-mail: info@kmt.org.pk For further details please visit our website at: http://www.kmt.org.pk