The Aman Foundation
The Aman Trust (AT) is a social sector enterprise that aims to champion dignity and choice for the underserved throughout the MENASA region. It has been involved in philanthropic giving for many years (primarily in Pakistan, India, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt and the UAE). It has operated largely outside the public purview due to the privacy needs of its sponsor trustees (namely Arif Naqvi and his family) but institutional capacity building and example-setting has dictated that AT is now visible. The sponsor trustees believe that wealth largely needs to be distributed within (and out of) each generation and must reach the ecosystem that has benefitted them. AT fulfils their quest for making this philanthropy both strategic and institutional and leading the way for others to achieve similar objectives. For the Pakistan component of its work, AT has seeded the Aman Foundation (Aman) with USD 100 million to help achieve this mission through the relentless pursuit of sustainable, scalable and systemic development in the areas of Health, Education and Capacity Building within Pakistan as the three pillars of its “business” strategy, whilst promoting female empowerment. The word “business” is used deliberately, since Aman is run as a private sector entity with accountability and transparencies (though no external funds are solicited) and clear KPI’s for its operational teams.
Since its inception in 2008, Aman has made appreciable strides in the healthcare sector as its’ first priority. Food security and nutrition is core to the development of any society without which targets in health and education cannot be met. Recognising this, Aman started a pilot project of providing hygienic and nutritionally balanced meals to 2,500 children per day in an economically deprived peri-urban community in Karachi. Its purpose was to improve health statistics amongst children while enhancing school enrolment and attendance on a measurable basis. Aman Ghar, as the programme is called serves as an operating model blue print for other socially responsible citizens and corporations to adopt in different localities, with a “franchisable” operating manual, model, systems and standards in place.
Forty per cent of death and disease in Pakistan is preventable and to address this, Aman is undertaking major health initiatives. At its core is the creation of its Emergency Medical Services, which have redefined ambulatory care in the mega-city of Karachi (18 million people) by offering a fleet of 100 fully-equipped ambulances to all parts of the city (ensuring full, city-wide coverage) manned by doctors and trained paramedics. Launched in March 2009 it has already made more than 200,000 emergency medical interventions to date and has evolved as a service of choice in time of need. Moreover, it has played a significant role in the flood relief efforts (2010/2011) across the province of Sindh and Punjab. They operated as mobile clinics that provided timely outpatient healthcare to an additional 100,000 displaced people in the worst affected areas. These ambulances are state-of-the-art mobile medical intervention platforms, with a central call centre and a delivery standard of responding within 8 minutes of a call being logged, at par with leading comparative indicators globally. At the same time, Aman is investing into improving emergency rooms through equipment and doctor skills at receiving hospitals, to reduce transit time and greater awareness of emergency services which largely did not exist previously.
The ambulance platform responds only to A and B level emergencies, leaving transportation and non-critical intervention to others. To further build on this, Aman has set up a Tele-health Service of a 26-desk Call Centre with medical advisors and doctors to provide diagnostic services and advice over the phone. This will empower and encourage women in particular, to avail of the widely used mobile phones in order to seek timely medical counselling that otherwise would not be accessible. As a result of successful early stage interventions, the spread of infectious diseases will be curbed and barriers to accessing health services, such as transportation and cost, will be overcome. This model has already worked successfully in India and sub-Saharan Africa and is being applied for the first time in Pakistan. It is working in tandem with an evolving Community Healthcare Workers (CHW) Programme, which will take healthcare directly into the homes of under-privileged women, who due to social and cultural constraints have been deprived of access to basic health services. A chain of 20-bed Mother and Child Hospitals all over Karachi is also planned to address high maternal and infant mortality rates.
Education is the second pillar behind Aman’s strategy in Pakistan. Aman recognises Pakistan’s need for a significant shift towards improved and relevant vocational training and technical education. The alignment of the labour force with the expectations of the private sector both locally and internationally is a critical success factor and vocational training rather than academic education for the underserved provides access to overseas markets, uplift and development and earnings streams. This would thereby aid foreign exchange remittances to the country alongside providing an enhanced skill set in the domestic economy.
The Education and Skills Programme initiated by Aman aims to enable youth from underserved backgrounds to obtain internationally accredited high quality skills. A university level vocational institute is to be built on a 300 acre site outside Karachi for this purpose. During the interim period, the programme commenced on temporary facilities. Equipped with state-of-the-art workshops and facilities and experienced instructors, the total project cost is USD 40 million. The six to nine month programme will ultimately involve on-campus boarding and lodging and will cover auto-repair, air-conditioning and ventilation, welding, and machining skills with a mix of soft skills, including computer literacy, physical fitness, hygiene, cross-cultural awareness and a second language that are so essential for a trained workforce. Most of the graduates will be suitable for overseas employment, which the Foundation endeavours to make possible. Aman is leveraging models from vocational institutions in China with the aim of training 5000 students a year. The courses cover industries such as construction, manufacturing, health and hospitality and a total of 42 skills. To achieve success at scale, Aman is partnering with specialist international vocational organisations, such as GIZ (Germany), City & Guilds (UK), and Skills International (Sri Lanka).
The second wing of the Education and Skills Programme is Teach For Pakistan — a nationwide movement of graduates and young professionals who will commit two years to teach in under-resourced schools. These young people will go on to become lifelong leaders working from across all fields to expand educational opportunity. The programme was launched in 2011.
To address the third pillar of capacity building within the community, Aman is also involved in strategic grant giving that is designed to work synergistically with its own projects while collaborating to leverage other people’s good work and thereby amplifying impact in its priority sectors; almost to saying, “Aman provides risk capital and early stage financing in core strategic philanthropy areas where others do not”. Grants worth USD 26.088 million to date have been made to leading initiatives in these sectors, striking partnerships with reputed institutions and organisations such as The Institute of Business Administration, Acumen Fund, Leyton Rehmatullah Benevolent Trust, Aga Khan University, The Citizens Foundation and i-Care.
In addition to its various projects the Foundation plans to venture into other areas. It aims to develop an Aman Campus, which will also provide space to other promising civil society organizations and social entrepreneurs. A strategy to promote culture and arts will be formulated by the Aman Culture House. The Aman Forum — an annual two-day conference will provide a platform to share ideas and experiences in areas of social entrepreneurship and development.
The Aman Fellow Programme will support social entrepreneurship education at IBA. Aman-Pals Rescue Service will promote public safety at Karachi beaches. The Aman Scholarship Program supports Pakistani students abroad, USD 1 million has already been contributed to the programme. The Aman Zakat Fund enables provision of services to people who cannot afford its cross-subsidy model. Besides all of this, Aman plans to adopt parks and amenity plots to provide sports facilities to underserved schools.