Bank Alfalah has supported the launch of the School-Based Family Learning Initiative, a 12-month programme developed in collaboration with the Association for Mothers and Newborns, Zindagi Trust, and Kiran Foundation, aimed at improving health and financial literacy among mothers, caregivers, and students. The initiative was launched at Zindagi Trust’s SMB Fatima Jinnah School in Karachi and will run across three Zindagi Trust schools and two Kiran Foundation schools located in Karachi and Shangla, using the school setting as a channel to reach both students and their wider families.
Under the programme, teachers will receive training to conduct health-literacy sessions directly with mothers and caregivers, with content drawn from AMAN’s existing digital health-literacy platform, Bakhabar Noujawan, which covers key health and wellbeing topics. Bank Alfalah will work directly with AMAN to build financial-literacy content into the same platform, giving mothers and caregivers access to practical information intended to help them make more informed financial decisions alongside the health-focused material already available through the app.
The launch event featured remarks from Dr Azra Ahsan, Secretary General of AMAN, Shehzad Roy, Founder and President of Zindagi Trust, Sabina Khatri, Founder and Chairperson of Kiran Foundation, and Madiha Javed Qureshi, Head of Corporate Communication at Bank Alfalah, bringing together representatives from each of the partner organizations involved in shaping and funding the programme. Dr Raj Kumar, EPI Programme Director for Sindh, also spoke at the event about the importance of vaccination and the value of closer coordination between the Expanded Programme on Immunization and the Education Department in improving health awareness and outreach at the community level.
The initiative is designed to test a model in which learning delivered at schools extends outward to reach mothers, caregivers, and entire families, rather than stopping with students alone. Lessons from the 12-month programme will be documented as it runs, with the resulting findings intended to help assess how the same approach could later be introduced in additional schools beyond the five currently taking part in Karachi and Shangla.
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