ZERO CARBON VILLAGE SCHOOL ROOMS
School room built in Pono village by Climate Volunteers from Vienna Technical University and University of Lahore.
Zero Carbon Schoolrooms
700 Village Schools
(Updated on 26 March 2025)
Investment Rs 0.4M in 3 months
EMERGENCY SCHOOL ROOMS
In view of partial or complete destruction of 22,000 school buildings in Sindh due to Flood 2022, majority of school children in Sindh are bereft of any learning opportunities.
We have launched the Zero Carbon Emergency School Rooms programme in order to provide basic literacy to school-age children who could transfer to state schools at a later date.
In order that girl children are not left out, we have decided to help build a school in every village in order that the facility is within walking distance of each family.
Out of the four villages where schoolrooms have been built, we found that in one of them, the enrolment has gone above 110 children. Accordingly, a second room is being built next to the one built just a month ago.
ROLE OF MAA (MOTHERS) COMMITTEES
So far, 4 school rooms have been co-built in 4 villages through collaboration of Village Maa Committees. The cost of the structure is extremely low because of the labour and finishing materials that are provided by the community.
Maa Committees are responsible for not only maintaining the building and its surroundings, at the same time they ensure that all school children attend classes and parents regularly pay fees to community teachers.
Except for the initial investment, the model is entirely self sustaining.
OTHER INITIATIVES
Legal Rights Forum (LRF) has joined in building large school buildings and hope to build many in dispersed locations.
Although UNICEF Sindh had asked for a model to be built as they were embarking on several thousand emergency schools, however, it seems that the preference of government lies elsewhere and the zero carbon option that was built with the help of villagers, has so far not been taken up.
CAPACITY BUILDING ON PRO BONO BASIS
With the help of our partner, The Hampton School who earlier trained 4 teachers, are now starting a 12-month teachers training programme in the village to train local teachers for each village.
In addition, The Stellar Learning Consortium, headed by Keith Birkhold, is developing modalities to create a creative commons digital learning platform for teaching courses in our village schools.