We attract interest and donors from all over the world to support the communities we work with in Shamshatoo and Baghbanan, which are close of Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhthunkwa.

Shamshatoo

Shamshatoo is a rural area situated next to the tribal area close to Peshawar. The people who live in Shamshatoo live in relative poverty as the area is underdeveloped with very little investment from the Pakistan Government. A recent Government initiative has merged the tribal areas with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa giving a commitment to investing in these areas to level up the infrastructure in the area with the rest of Pakistan e.g. schools and health care. There is no evidence of this investment yet.

Baghbanan

The Baghbanan area was a major resettlement area for Afghan refugees displaced by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s. The only work they could get was in the brick kilns which proliferate in this area. Baghbanan is a brick kiln community of about 5,000 households of primarily Afghan origin, internally displaced people (IDPs) as well as the indigenous population. Chronic rural poverty is endemic and many households subsist on an income of less that 1USD per day. Children are born into bonded labour (recognised as a modern form of slavery) and start work in the brick kilns from an early age. They have limited life trajectories and an average life expectancy of 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% and the intergenerational transfer of poverty is invevitable.