A Note by the Founder..... Dr Praveen Matin

A medical doctor by profession having qualified more than 35 years ago, I have had all my experience in family medicine.
Seeking to serve the less fortunate I set up my clinic at the edge of Mehmoodabad which at that time was a slum area of Karachi. Majority of my patients were house-maids commonly known as MASIS, backwards in all respects including education, health and basic hygiene. This group attracted my sympathies and I soon developed a strong desire to help them improve their lot. I was not satisfied just prescribing a long list of medicines and lab tests that I knew they could ill afford and in all probability would not buy or undergo.
With whatever limited funds at my disposal I tried helping those severely ill but soon realized that I could not continue this for long as the list of such patients was endless. I referred a sizeable number to Government hospitals but most would come back unattended as the situation there was bleak. It was around this time that I fell ill and required hospitalization and surgical procedure every few months. I endured this for a considerable time and one day someone suggested I seek homeopathic remedy for my condition. Within a few weeks of starting treatment there was a remarkable improvement in my condition and with passage of time; intervals between hospitalizations became greater till they were finally done away with.
This personal experience piqued my interest in alternative medicine and soon I gained professional qualifications in homeopathic medicine. Use of homeopathic treatment led to remarkable results in common ailments like asthma, fever, skin diseases, persisting coughs, aches and pains and especially in the treatment of children.
Homeopathic medicines are cheap and affordable so I  opened a couple of free homeopathic clinics in different areas of the locality employing part time homeopathic doctors and visiting these clinics as many times as I could.
While this project was running satisfactorily I came across an advertisement explaining a way an illiterate person could learn to read and write Urdu within three months by attending a class two hours each day. I found this interesting and enrolled for a teacher training course in this method commonly known as JUGNOO SABAQ. After completion of this training I tried this method on my driver and cook and within weeks they learned to read signboards and began writing shopping lists.
Statistics show that house-maids or MASIS are the most fertile females in this part of the world and each has an average of 6 to 8 children.  These children either roam the streets doing nothing as the mother is not at home or accompany their mothers to help them in their work. These children never go to school and their parents do not seem to be interested in sending them even to government schools as they don’t want to compromise the family budget.
I decided to pass on my training in JUGNOO SABAQ to these underprivileged children and initially trained four girls from the locality as teachers in this method. It was also the job of these girls to gather a handful of children from their area and begin Urdu classes in their respective homes. Teachers’ salary and stationary for the students was provided from my resources. This again was a very successful project and the results encouraged me to think about setting up a vocational and learning center.
By this time my husband who was working in PIA was close to retirement and realizing that soon he would have time to help encouraged me in setting up the Teaching Center I had always dreamt of.
Now both of us began working together in small rented premises in Mehmoodabad. This space became so overcrowded that within two months with encouragement from family and friends we moved into larger rented premises.
This was the beginning of NISHAN-E-RAH.
Here apart from concentrating on Jugnoo Sabaq we now had room to include sewing and computer literacy in the curriculum. Within a year this place too began to get congested and after a great deal of planning and thought we finally decided to construct purpose-built premises for NISHAN-E-RAH. This construction was completed from our own personal funds and in early 2004 we moved into this building.
We consider ourselves very fortunate that we have the support of our children, our immediate family and close friends in meeting the running expenses of NISHAN-E-RAH.
We have a commitment to provide all our programs free of charge and are constantly on the lookout to for more programs that we could include.
Presently we are catering to about 300 students each day except on weekends when we only hold computer classes for boys who are unable to come during the week.
Briefly, this is how NISHAN-E-RAH was setup.Now before closing i would like to leave the following message:

“Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country?”