Donating to NARA: Where Does Your Money Go?
Donating to NARA:
WHERE DOES YOUR MONEY GO?
Donating to NARA: Where Does Your Money Go?
At NARA Education, we want to use education to end poverty. Education means the world to everyone involved with NARA Education, and we believe that getting children excited about education early on is the best way to empower them to become intelligent, barrier breaking citizens, leading their communities out of poverty and struggle.
The problem is that there is a major education emergency in Pakistan (and many other countries) with millions of children living in poverty and not able to even dream about going to school. Because of that, we have made it our mission to provide education to as many of these children as possible so that every child in Pakistan has the opportunity for a brighter future. But, there is no way we can do it without your help.
In order to achieve our goal of education to end poverty, we need donations for education. We are incredibly thankful for all the donations that we have already received, and only because of those have we been able to build up our 2 schools (3rd on the way!), our education staff, and the beginning phases of our remote school technology.
There is so much more we can do! One of our Core Values is “Accountability and Transparency,” so we want to share with you where your donations for education have gone so that you can be sure that your money to help children is only going to building an amazing future for them.
Technology for Education
While we do operate schools, our larger goal is to reach those children in the deeply poverty stricken rural areas of Pakistan who have absolutely no way to get to a school and need to work to contribute to their family life. We have built a virtual school technology for education, fully equipped with challenging and approved curriculums that present the information in an exciting, easy to use way. Children can work on the lessons on their own schedule and pass through the levels under the supervision of a teacher monitoring from afar.
Getting the technology off the ground has been no easy feat as we’ve been working out the logistics of the actual software and loading it onto Chromebooks and tablets to find the best way to deliver it. Your donations for education have helped perfect this technology in the building phase, and now that it’s off the ground, we’re going to need even more help to acquire the physical technology to distribute it. Would you like to help us make this new education platform a reality?
Educational Resources
For those children who are able to attend our schools in person, we provide the basic resources that they need for learning. Your money goes to provide uniforms, books, writing utensils, backpacks, and chromebooks for our school children. Because many children can’t afford shoes, we most recently started providing shoes for them as well with your generous donations.
These children are the poorest of the poor and many of them don’t even have decent clothes to wear, so we provide uniforms so that everyone can be on equal footing in school and education can be the focus. Just because they can make it to school, doesn’t mean that they can afford to buy all the supplies, so we rely heavily on your money to help children.
Breakfast
If these families can’t afford clothes, then most of the time, they heartbreakingly can’t even afford food to feed their children. While we want to nourish their minds and use donations for education, we believe that children’s basic needs should be met first, which is why we use money to help children with breakfast as well. When you donate, your money goes to help children become better educated by filling their bellies in the mornings so that they can focus on school.
Breakfast is a new addition that we’ve added because one of our teachers noticed that a certain child was missing from school quite frequently, but would still show up sporadically. Inconsistent attendance is not conducive to learning, so one day she saw the child’s father in town and asked him why his son wasn’t coming to school regularly. He answered that lately most mornings, he hasn’t been able to give his son breakfast, and on those days he doesn’t send him to school.
We absolutely don’t want children to go hungry and that be what keeps them from their education, so we now provide breakfast at our schools.
Teachers and Curriculum Developers
Across our 2 operational schools and the 3rd one opening this month, we have 20 staff members working tirelessly to make sure the schools function day to day with technology support, general staff, and teachers. We have strong, caring, smart teachers in each school who are passionate about our cause, and most importantly, about the children. Most have been with us since we opened the first school, and we are hiring more to staff our new school.
Not only do they work all day to educate the children, but they also work with our software developers and our board to develop the curriculum for our remote virtual school technology for education. We depend on their educational expertise and know that curriculum design is time consuming and difficult, so we want to assure that they are compensated for their hard work and commitment.
NARA Schools Locations
Our 2 existing schools in Multan and Lahore have been so successful and become so well known in the area that we have been operating at full capacity for the past few years. But, there is still more demand! With your generous donations for education, we have been able to secure another school location in a tiny village outside Multan that is ready to open this school year.
We’d love for you to help us grow as an organization so that we can open more schools and distribute our virtual school technology as we embrace education to end poverty.
Our Donation Types
While we appreciate any donation, to help guide our donors, we have come up with 2 donation types:
✅ Sponsor a Child
When you set up a regular donation with NARA Education, you will be able to sponsor a child with a monthly donation as little as $10 able to cover their breakfast and uniform. The more you donate, the more supplies you will be able to provide for them and others.
✅ Donate a Chromebook
With our goal of technology for education, we not only need to get as many chromebooks as possible to distribute our virtual schools to remote villages, but we also want to provide each child in our schools with a Chromebook so that they can keep up with the future of education through perfecting their technology skills. Chromebooks come in at $80 each, so we need as many donations as possible to reach our goals.
We Love Our Donors
We have a huge goal. And as committed as we are to it, we cannot do it alone. We need the support of the openhearted community to provide donations for education. THANK YOU so much to our donors! We hope this was an eye opening look into where your money has gone and what future plans we have.
As we mentioned, we want complete financial and moral transparency, and we want to bring our donors and supporters fully into the fold with us as we work to use education to end poverty. Check out our Financials and Donor Policy for more detailed information.
Feel free to ask us any questions or find ways to get involved at info@naraeducation.org. We want to hear from and collaborate with you! Our board and staff are so passionate about NARA Education’s mission and future and we can’t wait to welcome you on the journey.
Ilona Sindhu
Ilona is a writer focused on Old Norse mythology, drawing from her Hungarian, Pakistani, and American roots. She holds a BA in Dramaturgy and Theatre History from NYU and a Master’s in Religion and Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Her work blends myth, culture, and storytelling across borders.
