23rd November 2016, Lahore: Kashf
Foundation, one of Pakistan's leading microfinance institutions, has been
awarded the prestigious European Microfinance Award by the Luxembourg Ministry
of Foreign and European Affairs. The award is a first-time win for Pakistan and
is in recognition of the Foundation’s credit and training facilities to
low-cost private schools.
Pakistan suffers from a serious dearth of quality
education, especially within the public sector. As a result, the country has
seen a rise in low-cost private schools which look to fill the gap left by
inadequate equipment and facilities in public sector schools. After extensively
researching the needs of low-cost private schools, Kashf Foundation tailored an
integrated solution that provides access to finance, school development
trainings, and general pedagogy trainings for teachers. To date, the Foundation
has serviced over 1,100 schools, trained 4,500 teachers, trained over 1,800
school owners, and positively impacted more than 570,000 students in low-cost
private schools across Pakistan with a product unmatched anywhere in the world.
The Award, which highlights the importance of
having an innovative approach and structural impact, also acknowledges the
creative use of both financial and non-financial tools to improve the quality
of the social and economic lives of families and communities.
Ms Roshaneh Zafar, Founder and Managing Director
of the Kashf Foundation, expressed her pride in how the Award recognizes the
importance of microfinance in reaching the goal of universal education: “Every
child deserves a good education, and education provision needs to be child-centric.
The Kashf program provides a new way to address quality issues of low-cost
private schools and can also provide means of getting more out of school
children into schools.” ”
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About
Kashf Foundation
Kashf
Foundation has been working for the economic and social empowerment of women
since 1996. It offers a holistic suite of products and services for the
financial and non-financial needs of low-income households. Kashf provides
low-income households, especially women, access to finance through micro-credit
and micro-savings, access to social safety nets via micro-health insurance and
life insurance, access to capacity building
services such as financial management trainings, business development
trainings, and vocational trainings, and access to social advocacy
interventions such as mainstream media campaigns, social theatre, and gender
justice trainings.
European
Microfinance Award
The only one of its kind in the world, the European
Microfinance Award was launched in October 2005 by the Directorate for
Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs of the Luxembourg Ministry of
Foreign and European Affairs to nurture innovative microfinance initiatives. It
is jointly organised by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, the
European Microfinance Platform (e-MFP) and the Inclusive Finance Network
Luxembourg (InFiNe.lu).
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