They are keen to study.  Why don't you help to get them out of the poverty cycle?

2.0  Students
The aim of ZCSS is to ensure that secular education is made available to all Shia Ithna-Asheri boys and girls.  Needy parents are encouraged to send their children to any local school of their choice, with ZCSS providing the necessary funds for school fees, tuition fees, books, uniforms and tranportation.

At present a total of  9216 boys and girls are studying under Zainabiya Child Sponsorship Scheme.  Of these,
   

Three sponsored Yatims, Sadats whose mother has  been given a sewing machine                                     so she can be of independent  means.

4.0  Zainabiya Schools
Some of the surplus funds and specified funds received from generous donors have been used to build our own schools, to run them and to help other schools to improve facilities.

4.1 In Avalkonda, Hyderabad, our school (built for £20,000 in 1994) is playing a major role in the local community.  Children from surrounding villages attend too.  The School building will need to be expanded soon.

4.2   In Alipur, South India, our school (built for  £20,000 in 1994) is now being expanded  to cater for Phase 2.  Staff Quarters are also under construction.  This will save some of the teachers 2 hours of travelling each way everyday.

Zainabiya School,  Avalkonda.

4.3  Tawheed Hostel in Bhuj (completed in 1993) is now open and students are benefiting from its presence.

4.4  Madrasa Islamia Kujhwa, Bihar is being expanded.   Imam-e-Zamana Block is at present under construction.

4.5  Najafi Education Centre, Bhavnagar, fully financed by ZCSS looks after nearly 600 students in Bhavnagar

5.0  Religious Education
In almost every village where we sponsor children, we now have a Madressa.  It is compulsory for the sponsored children to attend Madressa.  ZCSS subsidises or fully finances the Madressas according to need.

The lessons at the camps and for correspondence courses mentioned below have been prepared by local teachers from material supplied by the Islamic Education Board of the World Federation.

5.1  In Bihar, all the sponsored students of Bihar get together with some of their parents for the annual 3 day crash course in Islamics held at Madrasa Islamia Kujhwa.  The occasion is more successful year by year as the number of students attending increases.  Students from all over the State attend, come to know each other, make friends and expand their horizons.

Muhsin Dharamsi, Chairman of ZCSS attended the camp in November 1994.

Some of the 100 girl students who attended the camp are seen at  the Fajr  meeting.

5.2  A correspondence course in Islamics was started in Patna in 1993 because the sponsored students are spread far and wide all over Bihar and many have no access to a Madressa. 
Every sponsored student has to take the course and over a period has to answer up to 150 questions on Religious topics.

5.3  The Madressas in Gujarat are now being run by The Council of Gujarat and the sponsored children have to attend.

5.4  Bangalore.  An extensive religious education programme is in progress in South India.  827 students are sponsored in the region.  Madressas have been set up, existing ones are helped and teachers have been supplied to 13 towns and villages.

All the sponsored students sit a common religious examination twice a year. University students attend a special crash course in Islamics every year and a special postal library has been set up to supply them with books.

Teacher training classes are running on a regular basis to make the teaching more effective.

6.0  Hyderabad
400 children were being sponsored in Hyderabad through Imam-e-Zamana Mission on a one to one basis.

This system did not work well for Hyderabad for many reasons.  It has therefore been decided to stop one to one sponsorship and to donate regular monthly sum to Imam-e-Zamana Mission to help them in their education programme.  To this end IR.180,000 per month is being sent of which IR. 150,000  is for Sadat students.

7.0  Bihar
A few thugs disrupted our activities in Patna.  They ransacked our health centre and threatened the lives of Doctors and other staff and also the staff of our Coaching Institute where 250 students were being coached daily.  All our activities in Bihar were therefore suspended for a few months.

Maths   tuition  at   Zainabiya   Coaching   Institute, Patna.

Alhumdulillah with the help of the Governor  of Bihar and the Ombudsman Justice Sarwar Ali, activities have restarted.  Construction of Imam-e-Zamana block in Kujhwa has recommenced and students are once again benefiting from ZCSS funds.  Inshallah all will be back to normal in a few months and steps can then be taken to advance the activities even further.

8.0  Agencies
We work through local organisations to sponsor the children.  They  all have dedicated voluntary workers who strive for the betterment of their communities.  They look for deserving cases and then go out of their way to make sure the child studies.

They also make suggestions regularly on how to improve the education levels for the children.  Each locality has its own peculiar problems and needs people with local knowledge to help administer the sponsorship scheme.

Sponsor a  satisfying smile of Knowledge.

8.1  Monthly commitment  for ZCSS children.

9.0  The 1836 Sponsor Parents world wide who make all the activities of ZCSS possible by sponsoring on a regular continuous basis are from the following countries:

If you have any queries, please contact the Representative in your Jamat or Zainab Kassam, the Zainabiya Administrator at the World  Federation  Secretariat.

11.0  Accountability
The Zainabiya Child Sponsorship Scheme was started in 1981.  Throughout the period we have relied on visits by office bearers of the World Federation and other Mumineen to look into the education programme in India and report back.  In this role, the Presidents of the World Federation, (Haji Haider Haji and Mulla Asgharali M M Jaffer) have particularly played an important guiding role.

Haji Aunali Salehmohamed who lives in Surat has undertaken numerous visits to different parts of India to review the progress.

Haji Safdar Alidina reports back on Bangkok on a regular basis.

Chacha Paryani of Toronto has also paid numerous visits to India and reported back.

Haji Habib Mulji led a delegation from Africa Federation to Zainabiya School in                                                Alipur in January 1995.

11.1  The time finally came to send emissaries on specific tasks to different areas.  Mohamed Visram and Zeeshan Kanji, two of our hard working volunteers from London, visited India in December 1993.  Their report was printed and circulated with the Conference 1994 papers.

Muhsin Dharamsi, Chairman of ZCSS, visited India for a whole month in November 1994.  He was sent there to look at the requirements of houses for Sadats in Bihar and Karnataka and used the opportunity to look into ZCSS projects. Extracts from his report are printed as Item 12 below.

Jaffer Dharamsi visited Kutch and Kathiawad as special envoy of the President, Mulla Asgharali M M Jaffer in June 1995.  Extracts from his report are printed as Item 13  below.

All the photographs in this report were taken within the last year during the visits of Muhsin and Jaffer Dharamsi.

12.0  Extracts on Educational Matters from the report of Muhsin Dharamsi, Chairman of ZCSS.

12.1  Scope of visit
He had 27 full days in India, during November 1994.  While there, he visited 25 villages and towns in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Bihar.

He visited 12 schools and 13 Madressas spending 5-15 minutes in each class to study method of teaching and effectiveness.
He discussed the 4 main topics of his visit (housing, loans for economic development, secular education and religious education at 14 public meetings, with Madressa teachers (11 meetings), with School teachers (9 meetings), with youths (3 meetings), with University students (6 meetings), with Community leaders (28 formal meetings) and with members of the public - men, women and children in streets, houses, shops and public places.

His day started at 7 am when his hosts collected him for a working breakfast and ended at 11 pm when he arrived back at the resting places.

12.2  Schedule
I informed my hosts well in advance of my itinerary.  They went out of their way to cram as much as possible into the tight visit.  Twenty seven days of 16 hours intensive schedule would have been very tiring had it not been for the hospitality and caring nature of the hosts. 

For example, whatever the time of day or night, wherever we were, hot tea without sugar was served to me every hour to keep me going.

12.3  Our Schools
We now have 3 schools (Alipur, Avalkonda, Kujhwa).  Feasibility studies are in progress for others - may be in Patna to start with. 
My recommendations are as follows:

• each must be developed and maintained at a high level of education.
• each must ultimately have a well equipped library, vocational training centre, typing centre (it will be easy to upgrade typing to computing).
• each must have staff quarters. The 3 schools have a great problem attracting teachers.  Staff Quarters must be built as a priority immediately at all 3 schools.  This will make sure we attract staff from the cities to come and stay.

• Medium of Teaching.  Children have an apt for languages at age 3.  Hence Urdu, Qur’an, Hindi (plus Telugu in Andhra Pradesh, and Kannada in Karnataka) must be taught from childhood.  English is the medium of teaching after Standard 8.  Hence it should be introduced at Standard 5 by very good teachers of English.  The languages will make sure our children learn religion as well as having an opportunity to get good jobs.

In Andhra Pradesh, they generally continue in Telugu till Standard X and then change to English after inter or at University.  In Bihar, they continue in Hindi till inter and may continue in Hindi at University too.  In Karnataka, they switch to English gradually from Standard V upwards.

There is no point in having English medium schools at Nursery or even Primary levels.

In Mysore and in Bihar, I saw children in Urdu lessons taking notes in Hindi or English alphabet.  I met in Bihar a sponsored student of Aligar University who spoke Urdu faltingly and also could not read or write Urdu.  For the sake of our Eeman we have no choice but to recommend a high standard of Urdu till Standard 5 at least.  This will help them understand religion better in the Madressas too.

The Zainabiya school in Alipur is ideally situated to be developed into a centre of learning.  During the holidays, when staff are back home, the staff quarters could be used for orientation courses in Islam for University students, training courses for Madressa teachers, Islamic camps for students etc.

It could also be developed into a girls college or a Training college for Madressa teachers.

Madrasa Islamia Kujhwa could easily specialise to run special seminars and orientation courses for our University students.

In Avalkonda, the school is ideally situated to be developed into a great educational centre with vocational training too.  The standard of education needs to be raised much higher before the full potential can be realised.

All the 3 schools will benefit greatly if our teachers from the western World can go and work there for say 3 months a year as visiting teachers.

There is a myth about usefulness of school buses.  We should not finance any.  The papers are full of accidents involving many deaths.  If one of our buses is involved in a fatal accident, a whole generation could be wiped out.

I visited one of our Second year MBBS student (MIW/HE/1, Mir Murtuza Hussain) in Alipur.  He had a fractured leg sustained when his bus was in head on collision with another bus.  Many died.  50 were hospitalised.

Furthermore, Imam-e-Zamana Mission now find it too expensive to run buses which they say takes a large chunk of their educational budget.

12.4  Higher Education Scholarships
The education system in India is 10 years of schooling followed by 2 years of pre University course.

After that, each State conducts its own qualifying examination for a place in University or Medical College.  Some students sit for qualifying examination in several States to improve their chance of a place.  Depending on achievement in the qualifying exam, a student may be allotted a career and a place in any University in the State.  You do not get a choice.  The high scorers get into Medical College and as your performance falls, you may be allotted a place in Dentistry, Pharmacy etc.

For the qualifying examination, you may choose subjects to sit in according to the career you want to follow:

BPC (Biology, Physics, Chemistry) for Medical fields MBBS, BDS, Homeopathy, Unani, Pharmacy

MPC (Maths, Physics, Chemistry) for Engineering or BSc (Maths)

CES (Commerce, Economics, Civics) for B.COM

HES (History, Economics, Civics)

That is why we do not know what course somebody will do and how much it will cost - till the last moment.  And then the student gets only 3 days to pay or they forfeit their place.

The students who get good marks in the qualifying examination is offered a merit seat.  To be offered one is no mean feat.  ZCSS offers to pay the fees of those who are offered a merit seat.

Other students who pass are offered either a payment seat (with fees at least 5 times those of merit seats) or management seats (with fees and large donations to be paid).  Scholarships to the students of the last two categories are well beyond the means of ZCSS funds.

12.5  Religious Education
I visited Madressas where ZCSS children study.  I discussed with the teachers, methods of making the teaching more effective.  The children seemed keen to study and generally were quite enlightened. 

Even the University students were keen to study Islam and  to make up for lost opportunities.  To this end, it has been agreed to put more effort in postal libraries, crash courses and correspondence courses.

12.6  Zainabiya Institute
The long term plan has to be that in each village there should be 4/6 room school building for the following activities:

• Madressa.
• Tuition classes.
• Girls vocational training.
• Primary Health Care with a Social worker and visiting specialists on a regular basis
• Library (in many villages, the up and coming youths have asked for libraries. In some they have already started one themselves).
• Tuition classes in English language for children above class 5.  When children go to English Medium schools or colleges after Standard 7, 10 or 12, depending on localities, they score low marks purely because they do not know English and hence are unable to understand the subjects being taught.

As at November 1995, two Zainabiya Institutes are under construction and two have started in existing Madressa facilities.

Water from deep bore well dug for Zainabiya School in Alipur.

13.0   Extracts    on   Educational   Matters from the report of Jaffer Dharamsi.

13.1  Introduction
The President of the World Federation, Mulla Asgharali M M Jaffer sent Jaffer Dharamsi as his special envoy to Gujarat to look at the workings of Zainabiya Child Sponsorship Scheme.  Jaffer was in Gujarat over the period 20 June to 4 July 1995.  On his return, he had meetings with the President of the World Federation.  He also had a detailed meting with ZCSS team at the Secretariat.  Jaffer also presented his official 8 Page report to the Secretariat.

His report is quite extensive and besides the 3 topics covered in the precis, it covers the following topics:

Observation, Education in India, Education in Gujarat, Education in the Shia Community, Community run Boarding Houses, Occasional Training, Religious Training, Community run  Madressas, Education Committees and Acknowledgement.

13.2  Scope of visit
Throughout this report, Gujarat refers to the State of Gujarat, which includes Kutch.

The majority of the 3,000 ZCSS sponsored students in Gujarat are in Ahmedabad, Anjar, Bhavnagar, Bhuj, Husaininagar, Kanodar, Kera, Kikeria, Kodinar, Mahuva, Mehta, Mundra, Nangalpur, Palitana, Rajula, Shihor, Talaja, Una and Vat.

I visited the above towns as well as Bombay.
    
During the visit, I managed to:

• interview over 300 ZCSS sponsored students
• meet over 200 fathers and nearly 100 mothers of the sponsored students
• meet all the ZCSS co-ordinating personnel, societies, trusts and committees
• visit a sample of English and Gujarati medium schools, colleges and centres for the physically handicapped, the mentally handicapped and the deaf and dumb, where ZCSS sponsored students are studying
• visit most of the community run Madressas and Libraries
• visit all the community boarding centres for boys and girls

13.3  Conclusion
If the aim of Zainabiya Child Sponsorship Scheme is to just provide financial assistance towards educational costs of the needy, than there is no doubt that ZCSS is a great success.  Today all the parents in Gujarat can and do send their children to the school of their choice.

If the aim of the Scheme is to provide education in the Community, than also there is no doubt that ZCSS is a great success. All our Community boys and girls in Gujarat are being educated and thus are benefiting from the help provided.

However, if the aim of the Scheme is to provide a high standard of education in the community, then ZCSS in Gujarat needs to put in much more effort.  The Scheme sponsors three thousand boys and girls whose school reports show that most are achieving below average grades.  All these students are toiling from dawn to dusk, studying as they are told, but are unable to achieve scholastic excellence.  I could show how much effort is being put into educating the students in Gujarat; I could show where different people think the blame lies; I could repeat all the plausible excuses that I heard; but in the final analysis, today in Gujarat, there are just a handful of Shia community undergraduate students who are struggling very hard and still only manage to obtain below average grades at College and University.

I believe that through Zainabiya, it is possible to raise the standard of education for the boys and girls of our community in Gujarat.  A programme of changes will have to be undertaken.  Changes that will require a 15% to 20% increase in the present ongoing financial commitment, plus some capital expenditure.  The changes that I had in mind are as follows:

• Recruit 12 Educational Standards Inspectors and give them the responsibility of monitoring the progress of a batch of 200/300 students each.  They should interview all the students monthly and recommend to the local Education Committee the necessary action that is needed for each student.
• For all the sponsored students, organise coaching classes in the three important subjects of Gujarati, English and Maths plus any other subject that is recommended by the Educational Standards Inspector.
• Ensure that all Secondary school students receive extra tuition.  The Educational Standards Inspector should recommend the subjects in which the students need support.
• Establish a modern well stocked reading/reference/lending library at every boarding house, community school and adjacent to every Imambara in Gujarat.  The students should then be actively encouraged to utilise this resource.
• To make our community members computer literate, every library should have a computer which the secondary students should be encouraged to use.
• To increase general knowledge in the community, every library should have a video player with a regularly updated supply of documentary programmes.  Arrangements should be made to show these videos to all the students.
• Where students are attending our own community schools extend the time spent at school from the present half day.  This is necessary for a more thorough coverage of the syllabus and for extra-curricular activities.  (The Jaafery and Fatema School in Mahuva should seriously look at constructing a second block so that the boys and the girls have their own separate schools).
• The Husaini Education & Welfare Society should be encouraged to come forward with preliminary plans for starting a modern school for the community in Bhavnagar.
• Within the various Education Committees, give responsibility to a local professional to take charge of Vocational Training for the boys.  He should initiate a drive toencourage and advise SSC and HSC students to take up Vocational Courses.
• Within the various Educational Committees give responsibility to a Community lady to take charge of Vocational Training for the girls.  She should initiate a drive to encourage and advise girl school leavers to take up Vocational Courses.
• Within the various Educational Committees, give responsibility to an active sportsman to take charge of Physical Education for the boys.  He should initiate a drive to encourage youngsters to take up team sports and other activities which could lead to inter-Jamat sports Jamborees.
• Finally, organise a seminar to bring together all the members of the various education committees and societies in Gujarat.  This way there will be able to exchange ideas, co-ordinate their efforts and plan strategies.  To this end, it has been agreed to put more effort in postal libraries, crash courses and correspondence courses.

For further information,please contact:

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A Brief Outline of the World Federation Services

Medical Advisory Board
Provides medical advice and facilites to patients coming to the United Kingdom from Overseas.  Assists medical students and doctors for further studies.

Islamic Education Board
Publishes and sponsors books and pamphlets.  Guides and supports Madressas.  Helps Jamaats with Ulama and Zakirs.  Publishes Al Madrassa - a Newsletter aimed at Madressa teachers.

Zainabiya Child Sponsorship Scheme
Educates, supports and generally tries to improve the quality of life for Sadat and Non-Sadat boys and girls in India. Runs  Schools and other Educational Projects.

Internatinal Rehabilitation Board
Deals with issues relating to displacement and  resettlement of members of the Community.

Careers and Education and Training Advisory Board
Provides information and guidance on all matters relating to careers, training and higher education

Publications
Publishes Shia World, general circulars, press releases and other material to keep the membership well informed of the activities of the World Federation.

Where your money goes?
Sponsorship rate per student is a fixed monthly sum of £7.50  or US$12  or Can.$15 or F.Fr. 70  or  UAE Dh.50  or Aus.$ 20  or  Kenya Sh.600

You may sponsor for any period 1 to 14 years.
Your contribution will not only pay to educate one child on a one to one basis, but will also:

• help finance building of schools, 3 so far
• help run coaching classes, 8 at present
• help run Madressas in all villages
• help finance special needs of other students
• finance other students through Universities, 150 studying at present

At present 9216 students  are being helped at an annual cost of  £210,000.
Of these 5083  students are Sadats who are helped from Khums Sehme Sadat.
The remaining are financed under one to one sponsorship by 1836 donors.

It is possible to do so much with so little because we have dedicated voluntary workers every where whose efforts are exemplary.

So why don't you 
sponsor a child today?