05/10/2026
The First Pencils of Degi Khan Buledi: How 63 Children Rewrote Their Village’s Destiny
For as long as anyone in Tehsil Garhi Khairo can remember, life in Village Degi Khan Buledi, nestled within Union Council Khudabad, was dictated by the fragile rhythms of survival. Caught in a persistent web of tribal feuds and unpredictable law-and-order flare-ups, the village lived in deep, enforced isolation. Here, fear and conflict did not just disrupt daily peace—they completely severed ties with basic public services. Decades slipped by, and government education departments never reached Degi Khan Buledi. No brick was ever laid for a school, nor did official planning ever venture across its borders.
The consequence was a quiet, generational tragedy: nearly 99 percent of the people in Degi Khan Buledi and its surrounding hamlets could neither read nor write. A handful of families who had the financial strength packed up and moved to urban centers so their children could study, but for everyone else left behind, illiteracy became an inherited fate.
The weight of this silence fell heaviest on the village’s daughters. With guns, tensions, and strict cultural boundaries lining the roads outside, sending a girl to a distant city for schooling was unthinkable. For generations of women in Degi Khan Buledi, the simple ability to write one’s name or read a medicine label remained a distant dream.
Yet, despite the surrounding conflict, the desire for learning never truly died. Community elders and weary parents repeatedly knocked on the doors of the Community Development Foundation (CDF), a local organization deeply rooted in District Jacobabad. They asked for only one thing: give our children a safe place to learn. But CDF, constrained by limited organizational resources, found itself unable to independently shoulder the continuous costs of establishing and sustaining a center in such a fragile, high-risk zone. It was a painful waiting period—the community had the will, but the means remained out of reach.
The turning point finally came when the School Education & Literacy Department (SE&LD), Government of Sindh, launched its Non-Formal Education initiative to reach marginalized, forgotten pockets across the province. For CDF, this was the exact lifeline Degi Khan Buledi had spent years waiting for. Without hesitation, CDF submitted an application to establish a Non-Formal Basic Education Center directly in the village.
Once the approval came through, CDF moved quickly. Team members sat down with local elders, community influencers, and parents, transforming past anxieties into collective ownership. A safe communal space was identified, and the elders pledged their full support and protection to ensure that no child would be deterred by fear.
Today, walking into Village Degi Khan Buledi reveals a sight that once felt impossible. Inside the modest classroom, sixty-three children sit in neat rows, their eyes fixed on the blackboard. Most remarkably, thirty-two of these learners are young girls—the very first generation of females in the village’s history to hold a notebook, trace an alphabet, and claim their right to learn.
Under the accelerated Non-Formal Basic Education curriculum, these 63 learners are quickly mastering foundational literacy and basic arithmetic. Where there was once only the heavy silence of exclusion, the room now echoes with the melodic recitation of poems, the rhythmic turn of pages, and the proud laughter of children who are discovering their voice.
"In our village, no woman has ever known how to read a letter or sign a paper," one elderly resident remarked, his eyes welling up as he watched the children return from class. "Because of the feuds around us, we could never imagine sending our daughters away. To see thirty-two of our girls sitting with books today, right here on our own soil, is something we thought we would never live to see. CDF brought light into a place that had known only darkness."
Village Degi Khan Buledi is no longer defined merely by tribal conflict and isolation. With 63 young minds—and a majority of young girls—charting a new course every single day, the village has proven that when communities are given the tools, hope is far more resilient than conflict. A door has been opened in Degi Khan Buledi, and it will never be shut again.
