The Abaseen Foundation (AF) is a charitable body dedicated to improving the lives of those who live in one of the poorest and most deprived areas of Pakistan. It has been established for over 20 years, working primarily in the fields of health, education, research and relief.  In its early years AF only worked with government and donor schemes, but of late it has developed its own institutions, driven by the communities it serves, and now owns properties which house schools and health centres.

Abaseen Foundation is registered in both Pakistan and the UK and is governed by respective boards who work together through a memorandum of understanding and are two arms of a single entity. Abaseen Foundation UK is based in Lancashire and is primarily concerned with fundraising. There is also a significant research component to our work principally concerned with nutrition and mother-and-child health. Abaseen Foundation PK is mainly concerned with developing and running the various health, education and research projects on the ground in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Federally Administered Triabal Areas (FATA) region near Peshawar in NW Pakistan.

Our Vision

Abaseen Foundation aims to improve the lives of the population of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in general, and Town 4 and Hasan Khel sub-division (District Peshawar) in particular, through personal empowerment, poverty alleviation through healthcare provision, and formal and life-skills education, using evidence-based intervention and support modalities.

Please click the links below for further information on the following topics About Us:

1. Our main projects
2. Background information about the area we operate in
3. Profiles of our trustees
4. Awards and achievements
5. Future plans

Noor Model Schools for Boys and Girls

Profile of the area where these schools are located

Location

The two schools were started in 2009 in abandoned school buildings constructed for Afghan refugees in the early nineties in the Merra Baghbana area UC urmur Bala Town 4 Peshawar District. Merra Baghbanan is 20 kilometres South East of Peshawar.

Baghbanan is a brick kiln community of 5,000 households consisting of Afghan refugees, internally displaced people, and the host population. They live in chronic rural poverty, with many households subsisting on an income of less than 1 US dollar per day.  Children are born into bonded labour and start work on the brick kilns from an early age, and have limited life trajectories; average life expectancy is 38 years.

Girls typically marry in their early teens and have multiple pregnancies with short birth spacing. The adult female literacy rate is less than 3% so intergenerational transfer of poverty is inevitable.

Objectives of the 2 schools

• To prevent child labour by providing schools in the area
• To enroll and educate the children of school age
• To create an environment in the area to see education as a way out of the poverty trap
• To reduce malnutrition in the children by providing nutritious lunch
• To engage families through social awareness campaigning to understand the importance of education
• To improve the living standards of the communities through education

There are currently 323 students in the two schools and the majority of them are girls. The schools provide education up to primary level with the arrangement to transfer to MGM and BGM schools for further education.

These schools are mainly supported by donations from donors in the UK through our Sponsor a Child Scheme and the families pay a nominal community contribution to have ownership of the project. The children are provided with a hot lunch every day by a group of individuals in the UK through our Feed a Child Scheme, this is a very liked source of food by these children.
The children are taught the government curriculum and are provided government text books free of cost.

Baghbanan Health Centre

Baghbanan Health Centre (BHC) is situated next to the NMS schools in a purpose built building. The BHC was built by HOPE’87 with the donations from ANT Hiroshima (Japan) on the land donated by the community (about 1000 square yards) free of cost. AF was contracted to start health services in the building in 2010 and the funding was provided by HOPE’87, Proluka and Austrian Development Agency (ADA). AFPK was able to build and operationalize the BHC to provide essential services such as consultation and diagnosis; ante-natal and post natal care; nutrition support; pathology and free medications. In addition, health education sessions and social mobilization activities were implemented. The BHC saw 20,671 patients, from March 2011 to October 2012, including 3,100 girls and boys under 5 years and 7,000 women.  In 2009, a comprehensive survey of 200 households in Baghbanan highlighted high levels of acute malnutrition (26.6%) and chronic malnutrition (43.1%), poor uptake of ante-natal care (14.3%), low levels of infant and child immunisation (20%) and financial problems faced at delivery (89%).

The Baghbanan population of 29,340 comprises of 5,000 households with 7,770 girls (<18), 9,025 boys (<18), 5,715 women and 6,820 men. They will benefit directly from these improvements in the health care services provided by the HC. In addition, there will be indirect beneficiaries from the neighboring regions of Frontier Region Peshawar, FATA and the Afghan refugee camp in Shamshatoo (6-20km from Baghbanan) where there are currently very limited access to affordable primary health care provision.

There was a clear need to continue primary health care service provision for this chronically poor population beyond the end of the Hope’87 funding period, and to strengthen and extend the range of service provision including immunisation of women and children, reproductive health including family planning, health education, nutritional assessment, nutrition support for malnourished girls and boys under 5 years old, pregnant and lactating women (PLW).  In addition, an outreach worker programme to support dissemination of health messages needed to be implemented and local  traditional birth attendants (TBAs), who have been trained in safe and effective birthing practices, needed to be utilised in a microcredit voucher scheme for reproductive health support. AF PK and AF UK were successful in securing funding for another 3 years from DFID to continue and expand the HCB services.

The DFID project concluded in the 2016. Part of the agreement with DIFD was that minimal service user charges would continue to be charged throughout the project period and retained in order to sustain the project for at least a further two years beyond the life time of the project, to allow time to secure further funds for sustainability.

The current range of services include a range of curative and preventative services including consultations, Mother and Child Services, EPI, Nutritional support, Laboratory services, TB treatment and health education activities.