- Initiative for People in Need (IPN) is a non-government, not-for-profit and non religious impartial organization established in January, 2012. IPN was officially registered on April, 04, 2013 under the office of the provincial registrar joint stock companies & societies Peshawar, KP, under the registration of societies act XXI of 1860, with registration no 134/5/7361.
- It was founded by a researcher, writer, social and rights based activist; Mr. Talib Jan Abasindhi in Jijal Kohistan district, KP. He had got his M.Phil degree in Development Studies from Institute of Development Studies (IDS) KP, Agriculture University Peshawar, Pakistan back in 1998 while having another private master degree in Political science from University of Peshawar.
- Having a diverse experience in research, emergency relief aid, private and public sector services in different sectors, Mr. Abasindhi had founded IPN back in 2012 with a wide range of welfare oriented objectives in mind.
- Since its inception, IPN has explored many ways out and has mobilized several channels to meet its multi-directional objectives. Having a wide range of thematic and working areas, IPN had chosen to work on education with focus on Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). Amidst of stormy English language based education, there are countless critics to this approach in Pakistan and abroad. Contrary to this, MTB-MLE approach has a strong back from the researchers and linguists worldwide. The logic and solid ground provided by the proponents of MTB-MLE is that children can do well when the material of instruction and medium of instruction both are in the mother tongue of the child on one hand and material to be instructed must come from the immediate cultural and linguistic environment of the children. There should be the same language and environment for the children in the homes and in schools. Thus there are hundreds of academicians, researchers and linguists worldwide proposing MTB-MLE for the children at least for primary education as mandatory while having sound research based solid reasons and logics to support this proposition. The research work of the IPN’s Founder MR. Talib Jan Abasindhi is also providing solid grounds to build this building of MTB-MLE on it. Mr. Abasindhi’s research findings as started back in October 1998, supports this approach of education while saying, “The children speaking Indus Kohistani, when are enrolled in schools, are facing three foreign languages (English, Urdu, Pashto) at a time and hence those who are of average level or below average, they quit the schools within a year. Therefore, the dropout rate of students in Kohistan is at the highest level as is being witnessed in other minority language based communities in Pakistan and elsewhere in the globe”.
- To materialize the idea of MTB-MLE, IPN had established an MTB-MLE school with the name, Alfarabi Public school back in March 2014 as a pre-primary school with curriculum in Indus Kohistani, mother tongue trained teachers, a good learning environment and above all the first time ever coeducation in the history of Kohistan. This was a kind of ice breaking breakthrough in a conservative society like Kohistan. Thus, a two year pre-primary education was started in March 2014 which has now entered in its second year with a strength of 30 students; both boys and girls as of Oct. 2015.
- The bridging of these students from Language 1 (Indus Kohistani) to Language 2 (Urdu) and Language 3 (English) will be started from November 2015 and two years pre-primary education of these children will end up in March 2016.
- This has been the short history and story of IPN since its inception. Thus, the main focus of the organization has been MTB-MLE over the past few years with direct and indirect interventions. Staff capacity building and of the members of the organization have been the two major focus areas under the main head of MTB-MLE Program along with lobbying, advocacy and awareness raising at local, regional and national levels.
