BIRTH OF THE IDEA

Three years ago, it was wedding season in my peer group. Unlike most girls who fascinate about the perfect wedding day, we used to think about what comes after the wedding day, the ‘marriage and kids’; its challenges and responsibilities. We’d attend any workshop or any training we could find to learn what we can do better regarding upcoming generations.

After understanding the problems of education system by Ken Robinson and books such as John Taylor Gatto and Taleemaat by Syed Abul Ala Moudodi we were now thinking about alternative approaches to education. At this point we were exploring these things on our own but Feb 8, 2014 was a big day for all of us and changed many things.

I made a list and send everyone a weird invitation that I made with my sister and later on pioneer

Noor Ul Huda

BABY SHOWER

This was written on invitation card and considering not any of had any kids at that time, it was quite funny. My sisters and friends from neighbors helped me decorate the room with all baby shower stuff but they didn’t know at that time what the event was about.

The room looked exactly like a baby shower. All were excited to see what was going to happen and then it started.

It was my first session ever. I was the type who’d just listen in the back in workshops and never talked. But that day, the idea just took me over and I started talking. The timing was 8 am to 8 PM and to am and people went around 10 PM because we had an overwhelming and a memorable day.

I started with the name.’Baby Shower’.

Baby Shower is a way to celebrate the arrival of a baby by giving gifts to mother at a party. These gifts include mostly the baby items that the mother‘d need after the arrival of the baby. I said that this event is about all of us ‘getting prepared’ for our future generations and mere taking workshops and reading books won’t suffice. We have to prepare a system ‘virtual or physical’ where we can teach our kids the right way. If we want to home school our kids, we have to start working on ‘how to do it’ NOW because after the arrival of babies, we won’t have the time and the energy that we have today. We discussed a lot of researches and studies throughout the day all focusing on child development and ‘how humans learn?’

At this point most of the Pioneers were studying including me, but after few months, after completing my A Levels, I took break and started studying online and gave my full potential to the project. We’d have a weekly meeting almost every Saturday and everybody contributed however s/he could.

FINANCE

The finance was all done by our pocket moneys and some amazing supporters that we got like Hamna Naseer, Saliha Ibrahim, Ayesha Omer, Ayesha Maryem, Amerah Khan, Seeme Imran,Nayab Imran, Jawad Shah, Fozia Jawad and all our families and friends.

These three years have been a roller coaster ride. It still is. We learned a lot from ‘working on a project with no capitol’ to ‘working on an idea that’s brand new’. Nobody has worked on education the way we were doing before. We had no frame of reference whatsoever. It helped in a way that we learned to become much more resilient and were able to adapt to a lot of  challenges that came along the way.

CHALLENGES

There is a long list of challenges but one that tops everything is lack of family support at the beginning. The first year was the most difficult one as our parents won’t allow us to meet every Saturday. They didn’t know what we were doing they didn’t understand it then. They used to think that we were meeting just to hang out and gossip and this was very painful when we were doing just the opposite. Combining this with financial challenges, many times I heard from people that you guys won’t be able to make and this drug of ‘doing something’ will soon wear off but I think, ‘it isn’t a drug if it lasts for three years’.

MAKING FUKKUL AANI PUBLIC

On June 5, 2016 we made Fukkul Aani public and launched our website www.fukkulaani.com.

Since then AlhmdulilAllah a lot of great things have happened. We have visited schools, presented our project at different events and got overwhelming response.

What journey started off as a ‘homeschooling endeavor’ is now transformed into a dream of bringing schools like Waldorf Schools for learned parents that’d aid them in the holistic upbringing of their children according to Islam.

Along with that, many Pioneers have their own kids now mash Allah and they are rocking their healthy upbringing. They aren’t able to give Fukkul Aani much time as they are busy in their ‘field work’ now but the time we have spent working on this project is unforgettable and  it will always be a part of us. New people are coming on board now like our interns Mahnoor Rauf and Umama Zaakir. We hope we can take it further and help solve this problem of ‘education system’.

COMING SOON

Now we are bringing ‘Parenting Teacher Training Sessions and ‘Counseling sessions’.  Anyone interested can make an appointment and we’d love to be part of your journey and assist in any way we can.

To get to know more, here is an interview by Meri Kahaani,

INTERVIEW BY MERI KAHAANI