Thinking Personally about Social Change - Assignment Example

I am a South Asian residing in a small town in Karachi. Karachi has been my of birth and I grew up in this I have witnessed all phases of my life and survived this city through its worst and best phases. The city is the financial hub of the country, is the 11th largest city in the world and is home to millions. It is a rich ethnic composition of immigrants from India, Pakhtuns, Pathans and Pashtos. However the city is low on its literacy rate and high on poverty rates. The poverty rates were very high a decades and people were dying of mal nutrition back then.

Similarly where education was concerned, the lower middle class and the lower class was especially negligent of the need to give their children education. Some of them would claim that they don’t have the funds to afford their children’s education and the rest just did not bother. A significant positive change in the last decade that I have noticed in various sub-urbs of my city is the change in perspective towards education and with that the rising rate of literacy. There is not one organization that can be attributed to this change.

There are various reasons but the two most prominent organizations are The Citizens Foundation and the School of Leaders. A prominent figure who triggered this social change is Mr. Shahzad Roy. (Einstadt, 1973) The perception of people was transformed which has been the primary cause of this social change. Back then people did not care. They felt literacy is not relevant to prosperity, success and a good life. Because of high poverty rates, they felt that they could not even afford basic primary education of their children.

They would rather send their children to work to fend meager earnings to run the family instead of giving them the liberty to study in a school or college. The Citizens Foundation worked very religiously to change the social paradigm of the city and the country in general. They realized the need to fund education for the underprivileged faction of the city. They started developing schools in the rural centers, the small towns of the city and later on all over the country. It was important to have offer people the economic resources to acquire education.

This is what TCF realized over time. TCF tried to remove the barriers that existed between the lower class and the upper middle class of the society. What they tried to do was to promote the citizens of the city and the country as Agents of Positive Change. In this process they felt that basic primary and secondary level education is the right of each and every individual. They ensured that they could provide these basics to whatever extent they could. They also focused on character building and confidence building of the society.

(Giddens, 2006) In order to achieve this social change, TCF has been constantly surveying the education deprived areas of the city and the country at large. They conducted workshops and provided awareness regarding education and its benefits in the society. Then they made way for the change by providing people with the basics needed for education. They did a thorough assessment of the population, the income levels and the working standard of existing schools. Then they researched accessible sites to build schools and recruited qualified teachers within different sub-urbs.

Because TCF is an ngo, it did not meet a lot of resistance. The only time it was confronted with issues was when it had to seek permissions to build schools in some areas. This tells me that sometimes those vested with power do not bother about important social changes for the underprivileged ones because power blind folds with some luxury that they do not feel for the deprived ones. Best positive social changes come when the government is also in unison with the society. The changes triggered by TCF implied that people are open to positive change.

It is only a matter of time they are told logically and effectively why is the change necessary. Once the society grips it inside their heads, it is for their own benefit only; they will support it whole heartedly. WORKS CITED: Eisenstadt (1973). Tradition, Change, and Modernity. Krieger Publishing Company. Giddens, A (2006). Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.