Pakistan

Pakistan is an underdeveloped country, and a considerable portion of Pakistan’s population lives in extreme poverty and faces major deprivations such as lack of education, poor healthcare, lack of WASH facilities, and challenges from climate change, etc. The need for development programming targeting poverty is immense. But particularly when these existing needs (due to poverty) are exacerbated by a man-made or natural disaster, the situation of vulnerable people can reach crisis levels, necessitating humanitarian response.
MHI has had a presence in Pakistan since its inception in 1993, and a permanent country office was established in 2003, based in Islamabad.Since then, MH Pakistan has completed 48 projects with a combined portfolio value of over 1.78 billion rupees across all provinces of the country (Azad Kashmir, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa , Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan). For these projectsto provide services to the most vulnerable in education, food security, livelihoods, emergency relief (WASH, Health, shelter, food), MH has partnered with some of the most distinguished organizations currently working in the country.

Education

MH Pakistan has completed 22 projects for the advancement of underserved schools, where MH has been rehabilitating schools, establishing hundreds of 1-room schools in rural areas, providing facilities to all afore-mentioned schools, training thousands of teachers and enrolling tens of thousands of students. In addition, MH has been training youth volunteers to participate in various community service, advocacy or social action initiatives and educational programs. MH projects have taken particular care to incorporate gender aspect in order to ease the gender gap in education in Pakistan. MH has provided thousands of scholarships in the form of monthly fees, as well as provision of school supplies to girls.

Emergency Response

MH Pakistan has completed over 13 projectsresponding to various man-made and natural emergencies in Pakistan covering complex themes of WASH, Shelter, Livelihoods & Health in accordance with SPHERE standards.

Emergency WASH:
Given the lack of quality and quantity of clean drinking water in emergencies, MH Pakistan has worked for provision of handpumps, and protection of water sources from contamination along with testing of water sources for water quality (and training community to do the same, with provision of water testing kits). It has distributed water storage and water filters to families. Lastly, MH Pakistan has distributed hygiene kits to households along with health & hygiene trainings to encourage their use, especially among children.MH Pakistan has also provided hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries with dignified and safe WASH facilities such as toilets, latrines, drinking water facilities and plumbing. The projects conducted by MH has been done in participation with community with full community trainings and involvement in the construction, maintenance and rehabilitation of all provided facilities.MH Pakistan has also improved WASH facilities for schools and sought to alleviate girls’ absenteeism and dropouts by providing Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) and sensitivity.

Emergency Food Security:
In emergencies, MH Pakistan has stepped into to provide thousands of families with cash for work schemes that aim to benefit their community such as repairing of shelters, WASH, and other essential facilities. Moreover, MH Pakistan has distributed monthly rations to hundreds of families.

Emergency Health:
During emergencies, the breakdown of society often leads to increased healthcare needs of the population (due to injuries and illnesses) whereas the capacity of healthcare services to respond to these needs is diminished (due to facility damage,  unavailability, supply chain disruptions, staff shortages, and other difficulties). As such, MH Pakistan has been stepping in for setting up medical camps for general and outpatient treatment, checkups and emergency treatment and medicines. In particular these camps were intended for disaster-displaced persons and have served tens of thousands of beneficiaries, particularly women and children.

Emergency Shelter:
MH Pakistan has stepped in to build thousands of single family shelters and provision of shelter toolkits and Operation & Maintenance (O&M) trainings for conflict and earthquake affected people.

Food Security:

MH Pakistan has completed 7 projects in non-emergency developmental food-security sector. In this area, MH has been providing cash support on need-basis to most vulnerable families in rural Balochistan. MH has also taken particular care to provide for self-sufficiency so that families are not left deprived in case MH support ever stops, by providing livelihood supplies, tools, trainings, animal vaccinations and veterinarian services to enable disaster affected families to earn an income in the fields of gardening, livestock, agricultural inputs, poultry. MH has also provision of community resources for facilitate farming, gardening, and livestock/poultry activities.

Livelihoods:

In areas where it was suitable, instead of providing food security through agriculture, MH partnered with government of Balochistan to establish Vocational Training centers and provide training to youth on practical vocational skills with which they can find gainful employment such as electrician skills and other vocations. This project is a successful model of Public Private partnership (PPP). This intervention of MH is directly contributing to and achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth and SDG 17 “Partnerships for the Goal”.

Orphan Sponsorship/Child Protection:

As in various other countries, MH has supported various orphans by providing (or their guardian/caretaker families on their behalf if very young) with financial support on need-basis.

Climate Change & Youth Engagement

Under these projects, youth from various segments, including academics, NGOs, & corporate sectors were engaged, active citizens and alumni of British council. These youth created proposals 25 Social Action Projects on the issue of climate change and COVID-19. Under COP-26 Challenge Fund 11, project holders were selected from different parts of Pakistan and they have successfully executed projects on Climate Change.