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Pakistani Villages Hit By Quake Continue To Rebuild
FrontLines - February 2009
The Mansehra District on the eastern edge of Pakistan’s remote North West Frontier Province possesses remarkable natural beauty: rolling mountains, meandering rivers and shimmering lakes. Three years ago, that serenity was shattered when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake shook northern Pakistan, killing over 73,000 and leaving 2.8 million homeless.
Girls in Paras, Mansehra District, demonstrate the clay-coated writing boards they use for their studies. The pupils cannot afford notebooks; they memorize each lesson before washing the board and starting again. Since the collapse of their school building, the girls have been studying outdoors or in tents. Construction of their new school began in 2008 and completion is expected in 2009.
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A sign over the entrance to Shoukat Abad announces the food distribution day.
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The U.S. response was immediate and massive. Within 48 hours of the earthquake, the first CH-47 Chinook helicopters arrived from Afghanistan to ferry relief supplies to people trapped in near inaccessible
pockets of the province. U.S. government assistance focused on immediate humanitarian needs, providing emergency shelter, relief supplies,
and medical help.
Since the earthquake, USAID’s $200 million Earthquake Reconstruction Program has been helping to rebuild destroyed and damaged structures,
create jobs, and improve the region’s persistently
poor health care and low levels of school enrollment, particularly for girls. Four schools have been rebuilt in Mansehra District and an additional 10 are currently being constructed. USAID is also training district education officials, teachers, and parents to improve the quality of classroom instruction.
Girls receive cooking oil as part of the USAID food aid program.
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Fathers and sons carry home the wheat and oil rations from the parent-student distribution day.
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Today the Mansehra District faces another daunting challenge: high food prices. It is one of 12 districts in North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan Province classified as food insecure by the World Food Program (WFP).
In early September, USAID signed an agreement
to provide WFP with $8.4 million to purchase and deliver food aid to more than 2,900 elementary schools in severely food-insecure districts. Under this program, each family sending its children to a school receives a 50 kilogram bag of wheat, and each student gets a tin of vegetable oil. These “take home” rations serve as an incentive to the families to keep their children in school.
The effort is boosting school enrollment in Mansehra and the other targeted districts. WFP reports that throughout Pakistan enrollment in participating
schools has doubled overall and tripled for girls ★
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by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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