PAKISTAN

From Slum Wanderer
TO POLICY MAKER
Uzma Salim
TCF Alumna
Uzma Salim
kept her aims
impossibly high
and worked
incredibly hard
to achieve them.
TCF is undoubtedly transforming thousands of lives of
underprivileged Pakistani children, and I proudly stand as
‘one’ amongst them. I’m humbled to share my story with you
and our TCF family.
My family migrated from Goth Jaan Muhammad Arain in
interior Sindh to Karachi and started to live in a slum near my
father’s workplace in the North Karachi Industrial Area. There
was no school in my area — neither government nor private. It
was my parents’ strong wish to send me to school but the
nearest one was a 45 minutes’ walk away, and no one else in
the community was willing to send their children that far since
education was considered a luxury. After thinking a lot, at last
my parents admitted me in the same school. This led two
other families to follow our example, and three other children
and I began to walk together to school, 45 minutes each way.
When I was in grade seven, TCF opened a secondary school
in our goth (village) and the TCF Principal and teachers visited
our house as well as several other houses in our community
to convince people to send their children to school. I was a
victim of poor quality education in my public school. In TCF, I
started learning everything from the difference between small
and capital letters to reading and writing. It was a challenging
task for my teachers to teach me from scratch but I salute
them for sticking with it. Aside from school, I helped my
mother at home in stitching clothes as my father’s salary was
barely enough to fulfill our basic family needs. I completed my
matriculation in 2003, part of TCF’s first graduating batch.
I secured an ‘A’ grade in the Karachi Board of Secondary
Education exams, topping in my campus and coming second
among all TCF graduates that year. Thanks to my teachers, I
became the first girl in my community and family to go to
college. My humble background was in my way, but TCF
again came to my help and arranged a scholarship. During
college I began giving tuitions to pay for my daily transport
fare and book expenses.
“In TCF, I started learning
everything from the difference
between small and capital
letters to reading and writing.
It was a challenging task for
my teachers to teach me from
scratch but I salute them for
sticking with it.”
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