Bailey Urban Abdullah Anwar April 17, 2014

AFIL Project Paper

Overview We developed a relationship with the Houston chapter of The Citizens FoundationUSA, which is a volunteer-driven nonprofit organization that funds schools and educational programs for underprivileged children in Pakistan. The purpose of this project was to develop this partnership with the organization and help them reach their objective through whatever means we could utilize to support them. We contacted Abdullah Jafari, the Houston chapters founder, and began establishing this relationship in the fall. We coordinated and organized his visit and presentation at Texas A&M through the Asian Presidents Council at an event called Dance Dance Education in April, which was our on-campus awareness component of the project.

Mission Statement To goal of this project was to develop a sustainable partnership with The Citizens Foundation and begin raising funds on an annual basis for their teacher-training program. The three main aspects of this project can be separated into the fundraising, awareness campaign, and networking.

About TCF In order to better comprehend the objective of our project, and also to understand why we chose this Pakistani non-profit to collaborate with amongst such a diversity of exceptional options, it is important to take a look at TCFs goals, accomplishments, and achievement. The consolidated primary objective of TCF is to provide access to quality education for less privileged urban and rural communities within Pakistan. This need arose when the founders realized that the public school system was a failure of epic proportion, and that private schools were an enclave of wealthy and privileged students who were being prepared to enroll in foreign universities. Other than just the main purpose of the organization, there was one very significant facet of TCF that appealed to our team. Another major motivation behind certain TCF policies is not only helping the children, but also empowering women and assisting them to raise their status within the household and within society. TCF believe that literate and economically active women will promote education among their children, and so they target females through employment, adult education, and gender ratios within their school. We have listed some interesting facts about TCF below in order to explicate the broad scope of TCFs contributions: Started with one school in 1995; 1,000 schools had been built by 2013 Educates 145,000 current students in 100 towns and cities with 7,700 female teachers Is on the path towards rapid expansion - TCF hopes to be able to teach more than two million Pakistani students through their school system within less than five years 93+% of students matriculated successfully 79% of graduates go to college (compared to national average of 6%) Half the students are girls (educate a village v. educate a man)
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 Transparent accounting and operations - audited by KPMG; highest transparency and accountability (70/70 score) by US based Charity Navigator Very low overhead costs compared to many other prominent non-profits - Only 9.2% of funds go to program administration; the rest go to the education program Other programs: 10% of TCF secondary schools have vocational training Aaghi - adult literacy program for women Rehbar - Mentoring program for 8500 8th-10th grade students; the students are mentored by university students in order to help them establish good hygiene and work habits

There is no need to add to the already exceptional portfolio of TCF initiatives, but we agreed that there were two brilliant efforts being undertaken by TCF that highlight the success of their contributions to Pakistan and other developing nations. The first one deals with the textbooks and curriculum that have been drafted by TCF to be used as a standard in all their schools. The curriculum is designed so that it can be adjusted annually in order for the TCF schools to be able to maintain competitiveness with private schools, but surprisingly many public and private schools in Pakistan have begun to adopt TCFs curriculum and even purchase TCF textbooks due to how well they have been developed. This speaks volumes of the effectiveness and the quality of the education that children within the TCF system. The second aspect deals with TCFs contribution to foreign governments and non-profits. The TCF model is being replicated not only across the Indian subcontinent, but also throughout various developing nations in Asia, Africa, and

Latin America. TCF has assisted other non-profits in constructing and implementing sustainable and dynamic educational programs/policies that are catered to each countrys unique circumstances.

Objectives, Implementation, and Fundraising In the fall, our objective and strategy was to establish the relationship with the local TCF chapter, which we successfully achieved through email and phone correspondence. We also wanted to raise as much money as we could in fall so we were not scrambling in the spring. We raised funds by contacting an accounting professor, Dr. Anwer Ahmed, who asked the Pakistani and Muslim communities in the Bryan College Station area to donate funds. We raised $1600 through those efforts. In the spring, our objective and strategy was to spread awareness about the organization and its mission and raise more funds through the Dance Dance Education event, meet Mr. Jafari, and attend The Citizens Foundation Gala, which will be held this Saturday, April 19, and also network with interested parties throughout all of these events. We raised $667 through the Dance Dance Education event, which led us to a grand total of $2267. Tickets were $5 in advance or $7 at the door, and over 100 students came to the event. All proceeds went towards The Citizens Foundation. Asian Presidents Council coordinated the food that was served as well as the dance part of the event that followed Mr. Jafaris presentation. There was a photographer there as well who took pictures and will send them to us to use in our presentation in class next week. During Mr. Jafaris presentation, he explained what TCF does, the successes of the organization, why it is needed, and how the Houston chapter has contributed to TCFs success. For instance, so far the Houston chapter has provided the funds to build eight Pakistani schools and plans to build more in the future. Also,
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The Citizens Foundation was invited to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative in the past, which helps turn ideas into action and solve the worlds most pressing problems with innovative solutions. TCF shared its model for education in impoverished areas of developing countries. TCF is extremely proud of this. The purpose of our fundraising is to provide training for TCF teachers. We know that the cost of each teacher being trained is $30 and the cost for training each administrator is $50, so this averages out to either training 75 teachers or 45 administrators! To train the teachers, TCF rigorously works with school heads to empower them by developing their leadership and management skills. Concurrently, there are intensive sessions for the teachers ranging from content support across subjects, pedagogical approaches and assessment methods to early childhood education, character building and critical thinking. There is a rigorous annual training program every year for current teachers as well.

Challenges Initially we wanted to start a microfinancing project for women in Pakistan, but unfortunately we cannot ensure its implementation unless we go to Pakistan. We also looked for non-profits that were geared towards womens issues and although there were many that met that criteria, we could not find one that was as well established or as transparent as we had hoped. That was when we decided to shift to providing teacher training at TCF later in the fall semester due to the fact that TCF also supported education and economic opportunities for females. Also, though the Dance Dance Education event was a packed house and there were not any seats left, it was still a disappointment that even after reminding the AFIL group twice, no one in our class showed up to the event. Lastly, there were some people we reached out to that
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could not help us, such as Dr. Lester in the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship, and Dr. Griffin, the department head for Management. However, we did not expect that everyone we talked to would be able to help us.

Successful Aspects of Project Implementation We had three main successes: fundraising, outreach, and a developed and established relationship with TCF. Our initial fundraising goal was $3000, and while we did not quite reach the goal, we still were pretty close at $2267 and consider that a success. We also were overwhelmed by the attendance at the Dance Dance Education event and Mr. Jafaris presentation was very interesting. Students seemed to learn a lot and asked a lot of questions afterwards. Mr. Jafari was very kind and receptive of the idea of a partnership with Texas A&M and would like to continue the partnership in the future, which we also consider a success and look forward to other AFIL groups in the future continuing this project. What led to these successes was simply our network. Abdullah was the one who contacted TCF and had been corresponding with Mr. Jafari throughout the year, as well as coordinating his visit and presentation with Asian Presidents Council. Abdullah had previously been on staff for the council, so that network was a great advantage to that events success. Bailey reached out to Dr. Gaspar about the project at the beginning of the year, who pointed us in the direction of Dr. Ahmed, who was eager to help us and said we could easily raise this money annually in the local Pakistani community.

Learning Outcomes The project itself taught us that two people can make a sizeable impact abroad if we are willing to use our network and be proactive about corresponding with people and
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organizations that can help us. We learned the value of consistent communication with one another as a team and trusting each other to do the tasks we asked of each other. Personally we both learned that even though our original plan to start a microfinancing initiative did not work out, we still were able to transfer the major goal of that original plan -- to help Pakistani women find work -- and this taught ultimately us the value of not giving up and learning how to pivot as needed when implementing a new project.

Timeline October 2013 Choose original project plan November 2013 Pivot to the new project plan November 2013 Begin correspondence with TCF representatives December 2013 Start to plan out details of the project with Abdullah Jafari November and December 2013 Raise $1600 through Dr. Ahmeds connections January & February 2014 Network within and attempt to raise funds through the Pakistani community in Houston February 2014 Begin to establish the idea of a collaborative educational event with the Asian Presidents Council (APC) March 2014 Organize Mr. Jafaris trip to Texas A&M as a guest speaker for one of APCs Asian Heritage Month events April 2014 Dance Dance Education event; Mr. Jafaris visits TAMU TCF Gala in Houston, TX Summer 2014 Possible visit to Pakistan to see TCF schools

Assessment and Self-Evaluation

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Since our major project goal was to raise funds and spread awareness, we use the simple quantitative measure to evaluate our effectiveness. Since we raised $2267 and spread awareness of The Citizens Foundation to over 100 TAMU students, we consider our goals to have been achieved. We successfully initiated and completed a realistic and sustainably modeled project that promoted international awareness on campus. The only part of this project that is as of yet incomplete would be the sustainability part, but we hope to address that through a variety of channels. First and foremost, we expect and very much hope that another AFIL team will continue this project in the coming years and will partner with the Asian Presidents Council to hold a similar event on campus during Asian Heritage month to spread awareness. We will also be reaching out to the Pakistani Students Association to see whether or not they would like to be part of this recurring program. Additionally we will also try to establish a TCF internship as an opportunity for Mays students who are interested in pursuing the certificate for non-profit business. TCF currently has an internship program that is tailored to graduate students at Harvard, and we would like to implement something similar here as well.

Conclusion By raising funds for The Citizens Foundation, we made an impact at the international level. 75 teachers can be trained this year because of our efforts. By teaching over 100 A&M students about TCF, its mission, and how they can get involved, we have created awareness on our campus, and we hope that TCF has future donors and volunteers as a result of our partnership with them. We absolutely expect another AFIL team to continue this project in coming years and are willing to ensure that this happens.