St. Peter’s English Medium High School, Okara, Pakistan
In Pakistan, English schools are a luxury that usually only the rich can afford to attend.
Our mission is to overcome discrimination and to provide good education to the poor!
St. Peter’s English Medium High School, is a school of the poor for the poor, and was founded in 2004 by a group of young Christians in the city of Okara in Punjab (NE Pakistan), where temperatures near 50° C (122° F) are nothing unusual in the summer.
St. Peter’s is located in a Christian colony where most of the people struggle to survive. The social environment is marked by violence, corruption, and dehumanizing poverty. This turns the way to the school into a very concrete risk for the life of the children and makes it important to have a school within walking distance. Most of the children are extremely poor and can not afford to pay any school fees. Therefore, our school is completely dependent on donations and in urgent need of financial support.
From the beginning, the school was greatly accepted by Christians and Muslims. We are proud that about half of the students are girls – in a country where education for girls is often considered unnecessary. The school is registered as High School and the quality of education is excellent, which is attested by impressing pass rates in the State Board Exams.
Poverty, gender, or religious believe shall not be a factor hindering the expression of a child’s intelligence or the development of its personality. By providing good quality education we improve the future prospects of poor children and their families. In order to overcome discrimination and to build peace, our school accepts children regardless of their religious believe. We trust that children, who have received the same education, respect, care, benefits and love, will later contribute to create a peaceful Pakistan.
Previous projects
In the past we were running a second school, St. Michael the Archangel’s English Medium Middle School in Karachi. Unfortunately, the rented school building was in danger of collapsing and the owner was not ready to repair it. As we neither had enough funds to repair it, nor the possibility to relocate the school, we had to close the school for safety reasons.
After the floods caused by the heavy monsoonal rains in 2010, huge parts of Pakistan were devastated. Millions of people were without clean water, food, medicine, clothing, and housing. We had personal contact to sisters of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (FMM) in in Sindh, Balochistan, and Punjab and were able to support them with what was needed the most – water, food, and tents. The FMM sisters, their staff, and their students were on the spot, saving lives, which was awarded by a gold medal and certificate of appreciation by the ministry of education.
In 2020, the poorest people in Pakistan suffered particularly from the global corona crisis. Many job opportunities (e.g. as maids) have disappeared and food became even more unaffordable for them. Paxvobis e. V. therefore distributed rice free of charge to the needy in several campaigns and thus ensured their survival.