🖍️ A Bright Spot from Karachi - A Blind 80-Year-Old Ed Expert Launches a Montessori School

The Story of Zubeida Mustafa in Pakistan.

Zubeida and her friend observe the first group of students.

It's not every day you see an 80-year-old blind Pakistani journalist start a Montessori school for out-of-school low-income children. Yesterday I was privileged to witness this in Karachi, where Zubeida Mustafa launched a lab preschool. Zubeida broke barriers as one of the first female journalists in Pakistan when she joined Dawn newspaper in 1975 and wrote four books including one on the role of language in education. But to her, this was not enough.

Even though she can now barely see or walk, Zubeida believes a new model is needed, to bring Montessori approaches to the most marginalized kids and engage their mothers to support their learning. She is reading Brazilian educationist Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (on a large-print e-reader) to shape her thinking. She found a school willing to share an empty room. She found a Montessori master teacher willing to volunteer her time - to go to informal settlements to find out-of-school children. And Zubeida made it happen.

A student cuts the ‘ribbon’ to open the door. (Made of toilet paper because no ribbon nearby - a great example of the Indian concept of Jugaad - a hack to make it work.)

My work these days focuses on leaders transforming systems at large scale - so it renewed my energy to be reminded of the power ONE leader can have, even if they start small. We need lab schools testing new models, just as we need gritty government and non-profit leaders taking solutions to scale.

Zubeida's story reminds me what is possible when we bring like-minded pioneers together. She has been friends with education activist Baela Jamil for many years and Baela donated books to the school. When the three of us met over chai, they told me how they have such a strong soul connection and supported each other through many turbulent, difficult decades in Pakistan. How beautiful.

Baela Jamil gives Urdu leveled reading books to the school’s teacher.

Zubeida reminds me of Dr Utheri Kanayo (aka Susan Kiragu). When Rebecca Crook and I first met her, Utheri dreamed of starting a Pan-African primary school. And 5 years later, she has launched Children In Freedom School in Kenya - with technical support as a Metis Fellow and so much parent demand she is expanding to a secondary school!

I am so inspired by these trailblazing women. This is what happens when you equip proximate leaders with tools and community to take their work to the next level. Dedicated leaders are ALWAYS out there - even in the most hard-to-reach places. You just have to do the work to find them and support them to make their visions a reality.

💫 This is part of my journey to write a book about pioneers of systems change in the Global South's education bright spots (Brazil, Kenya, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria and Colombia). For more stories from this trip, sign up for my newsletter: edwell.substack.com. Or follow me on Instagram @katpattillo. 💫

Myself at the entrance - the door says in Urdu: ‘Let’s Play Center.’

**Update 2/16/23 — At Zubeida’s request, the photos originally posted have been cropped to protect the identities of her students and teachers.**