Subject: Financial Assistance for the Construction of Four Classrooms and one
Office For St. Mary’s School, at St. Roque Parish, Pasrur
.
HISTORY:
St. Roque Parish is one of the oldest parishes in the Archdiocese of Lahore. The great Capuchin Missionaries from Belgium historically founded it in 1912. It is a village parish. The parish covers a huge geographical area. There are about 5000 Christian families and among them 1750 are Catholics in 210 villages. Pasrur is 125km away from Lahore towards east north.
EDUCATION BACKGROUND:
People of Pasrur are illiterate and unskilled. The ratio of literacy is very low. It is one of those cities that are very much ignored and backward. People don’t stress on sending their children in schools or in training institute. Pasrur is a town of Sialkot district. Sialkot is famous for sports stuff. Their work is not limited up till factories or centers but it reached in the houses. Most of the people do job of stitching football. This is a home job and all members of a family take part in it. They prefer doing this work that are totally child labor. They opt for time being benefit. Instead of spending money on children, they give little money to parents. Here people feel proud and happy that their child is earning. On long run it is totally wrong and spoiling the whole generation.
PARISH PRIORITIES:
With our pastoral team we have discuss the parish situation in detail. We have collected different ideas and have arranged parish priorities. We planed to work on five target areas on priority basis. Five target fields are as follows:
1. Education and Training 2. Social Awareness 3. Faith Formation
4. Human Health 5. Agriculture Awareness
EDUCATION AND TRAINING:
Pasrur is very remote area. People are very poor, illiterate and igorant. They don’t see the value of the education for their children. Consequences they send their children early to work which means to get meager salary what keeps up vicious circle. Only a small % of children are going to school. Rest are roaming here and there or doing child labor. We believe through education we could uplift the standard of our people and could be able to get them out of that vicious circle. Therefore education and professional training is our top most priority. Here we are stressing on formal and informal education. Under formal education our target is to educate our children and under informal education we prepare the parents to send their children to school. We have conducted different seminars for parents’ awareness of education and programs for the children to create interest to go to school to get education.
OUR NEED:
Through our education seminars and awareness program of two and half years we are succeeded to convince many parents to send their children to school, and now we got 65 children in the nursery class. These children are not only Christians but also many Muslims. I accommodated them in one room of sisters’ premises. Sisters have granted me permission to use the room uptll June 2002. As we have no room I am very worried about the future of our struggle and the future of the poor children.
There is a genuine need of our people to have a school. To construct a school cost us a lot. It is not possible for us to construct a school on our own. We are desirous of your financial and moral assistance in this regard. We are ready to contribute our share happily and generously.
In April 2002 we plan to construct a primary school for the children. On initial stage we plan to construct four classrooms and one office. Land for a school is available. Size of a room is 16X25ft. The cost of a school is as follows:
Cost of one room 16X25ft Rs 140,000/-
Cost of four rooms 140,000X4= Rs.560,000/-
Cost of one Office 12X12 ft. Rs.043,920/-
Furniture Rs.117,200/-
(100 desks, 10 chairs, 5 tables)
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Total Cost Rs.861,120/-
LOCAL CONTRIBUTION AND REQUEST
We like to inform you that we are ready to contribute to construct the school up till roofs. To achieve our target we have started the work of construction I am sending you some snaps of the construction work and I hope these snaps will give you clear vision of our mission and of our contribution. For school construction we are contributing as follows:
Bricks 66000 Rs. 100,000/-
Cement 100 bags Rs. 25,000/-
Sand 10 trolley Rs. 5,000/-
Gravel Rs. 2,000/-
Labor up till roof Rs. 30,000/-
Contribution in furniture Rs. 15,000
Total Local Contribution Rs. 177,000/-
This local contribution we have collected Rs.75,000/- from St. Roque Parish Pasrur, Rs.75,000/- from one village people and Rs.27,000/- from parents and other generous people. For rest of the work we require your financial assistance. May we request you please grant us Rs. 684,120/- to complete the work? So in September 2002 we could be able to start our new academic year in a new school. I thank you in anticipation. I with my teachers and students pray for you, benefactors and your families.
Yours in Jesus Christ,
Fr. Tariq Isaac
Principal
St. Mary’s School, Pasrur