GRACE Public School & College Skardu

A future-focused school where all children including girls and children with disabilities learn by doing, nurturing curiosity across environment, science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (E-STEAM) to solve real-world problems. GRACE Public School was opened aiming at promoting inclusive education for all children with special focus on girls and children with disabilities in district Skardu Gilgit-Baltistan in the extreme northern part of Pakistan in April 2007. Therefore GRACE Association establish this school in Astana village, 4 KMs away from Skardu main city and 8 KMs from Skardu Airport at the main road, easy to access for all people. A local member of GRACE Association donated 0.4 acres of land free of cost but the donated land value worth PKR 2 million. GRACE constructed an elementary school building in collaboration with HGC Japan with an invaluable financial support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan in 2009. Now our school has a beautiful building consisting 4 classrooms, an office and a multipurpose hall with accessible and separate rest rooms for children with disabilities and girls. Equipped with necessary learning and other resources including internet. The school location looks naturally beautiful surrounded by the Karakuram, Hindu Kush and Himalayan Mountains and fruits trees around. The school is serving now some 350 students including 70% girls and 14% children with partial disabilities e.g. visually, speech, listening, and physically impaired. GRACE school aims to ensure access to and quality learning for all children. Though our school is not that much capable to address special learning needs of all children but we believe that something is better than nothing. We also believe that our efforts contributing like a small drop in the sea to achieve universal primary education goals by providing a learning opportunity to every child enrolled in this school. GRACE School is governed/managed by a dedicated team of volunteers representing stakeholder communities including educational experts, parents, and GRACE volunteers. School is run through its own generated funds by collecting reasonable fee from parents. Teachers training, additional classrooms, and other resources including furniture and IT lab and library are some of the challenges of this school. Your support to address these challenges are highly welcome!