In the Ghizer district of Gilgit-Baltistan, foundations have been laid for two state-of-the-art Aga Khan higher secondary schools in Gupis and Yasin, promising continuity of quality education through Grade 12 for thousands of students in the region.
“…Most large-scale international education reform initiatives start with a globally designed intervention to improve learning outcomes. At Schools2030 we flip this mindset and start from the classroom level – we believe educational change can only happen when it is initiated and owned by teachers, learners and school communities,” says Dr Bronwen Magrath, Global Programme Manager at the Aga Khan Foundation and lead of the Schools2030 initiative.
This 28-minute documentary film introduces audiences to the transformative world of Schools2030, a programme led by the Aga Khan Foundation, and its mission to help give teachers and school communities the tools they need to become education innovators.
“Schools should be the centre of social change, not the target of change. This platform gives teachers a way to reclaim the discourse about ‘what works’ to improve holistic learning outcomes in some of the most challenging contexts in the world,” said Dr Andrew Cunningham, the Global Lead for Education at the Aga Khan Foundation.
Gilbert Atukunda, English Language and Literature teacher at the Aga Khan High School, Kampala, works with students and teachers to build a spoken word poetry tradition that empowers students to express themselves with confidence. “That attachment all the students have towards poetry, the opportunity they receive to freely discuss their passions, and the peer review and collaborative sessions brings everyone together and a part of a bigger picture, which I think gives the students that sense of social belonging they deserve within a school.”
In the mountainous Gorno-Badakhshan region of Tajikistan, businesses ravaged by the COVID pandemic have found new hope in the opening of the Khorog Centre for Entrepreneurship by the University of Central Asia’s School of Professional and Continuing Education. Activities will support new emerging and existing businesses and promote the development of young people.
Growing up in an environment where mental health is sidelined, Khushbu Kotak, an alumna from the Aga Khan Academy in Mombasa, Kenya, believed her feelings and opinions were often suppressed, leading her to feel unsupported. After going through counselling herself, she began efforts to destigmatise mental health well-being and started a counselling service for youth called Salama (“Safe”) Minds.
"As a communications school that is part of a global development organisation, we believe there is nothing we can do that is more important than battling the 'Infodemic' of false information that threatens the very fabric of society," said Professor Lawrence Pintak, Dean of AKU’s Graduate School of Media and Communications. A cross-border anti-misinformation initiative led by the School has been selected by the Paris Peace Forum to be showcased at its upcoming conference in November 2021.
From 2016 to 2021 the Aga Khan Foundation, in collaboration with local governments and communities and with the financial support of Global Affairs Canada, undertook a project dedicated to improving the health and well-being of women and children under five in Kenya, Mali, Mozambique and Pakistan. The US$ 24 million project – Access to Quality Care through Extending and Strengthening Health Systems (AQCESS) – reached 1.7 million people, 60 percent of them women and girls.
In July 2021, during his tour of the Aga Khan Higher Secondary School, Karimabad, Hunza, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Education, Mr. Shafqat Mahmood, praised the Aga Khan Education Services for providing quality education to students in some of the remotest parts of Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral.