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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.
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It was founded by a researcher, writer, social and rights-based activist & Development Professional; Mr. Talib Jan Abasindhi in Jijal Kohistan Lower district, KhyberPakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Mr. Abasindhi has earned 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.
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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.
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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 alike. 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 logic 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 or so while failing to combat the faced difficulties. 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”.
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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 a learning facility for both the little girls and boys under one roof in an area where there was neither public nor private sector facility. Thus, a two year pre-primary education was started in March 2014 which has now completed 10 years of its journey towards the goal as of April, 2024. During this period, 110 students (38 girls & 72 boys) have graduated from IK MLE school (APS).
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The bridging of these students from Language 1 (Indus Kohistani) to Language 2 (Urdu) and Language 3 (English) is made during the last 06 months of the 2 years graduation program at APS.
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During the past one decade, IPN has also been involved in various activities alongside its regular focus on IK MLE program. These activities are sharing the research and MLE work in international conferences while reciprocal learning, Projects initiated with the Go KPK for celebrating and documenting cultural diversity, lobbying & advocacy for the rights of children, old age people, & people with disabilities as well as bringing forth few publications in Indus Kohistani alongside the syllabus of IK MLE School under its wing KCDP. In addition, IPN has played a vital & active role during the emergency response in the devastating flood in Kohistan in July 2022, independently and in collaboration with few other organizations.
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An announcement: We are taking this opportunity to announce that, keeping in view the remarkable progress and performance of APS, after having the 10 years performance of APS analyzed, in addition to the requests from the local community, IPN management has decided to upgrade APS to Primary level on the same UNESCO MLE Model, in 2025. The textbooks production work is in progress till the end of the year 2024.
