Beaconhouse School System Gulshan Middle 1

How teaching progressive values brings change

Beaconhouse School System Gulshan Middle 1, a private school in Karachi, Pakistan, has created key outreach programmes based on progressive values that help some of the most vulnerable people in the community, in particular transgender and intersex people.

Beaconhouse School System Gulshan Middle’s ethos centres around the idea that education and the youth who inherit progressive ideals, can invoke greater change – even if that change is small.

The school seeks to help enlighten its students and encourage them to help bring about positive outcomes through PSHE lessons. Its core strands comprise several principles: Personal Development, Social, Health and Emotional Values and Beliefs. It has used this as a foundation for club activities that actively work with different parts of the community and promote eco-friendly initiatives such as ‘Team PNEC- NUST, Shell Eco-Marathon’. The campaign allowed students to learn about the design of a model for a fuel-efficient car that helped broaden their insights into the type of infrastructure necessary for an eco-friendly and greener Pakistan.

But central to Beaconhouse School System Gulshan Middle 1 mission is the collaboration its students have had with transgender and intersex people. Through its Social Services Club, students first partnered up with Pakistan’s first Transgender Lawyer, Nisha Rao. Together, they created a documentary that helped illustrate the issues faced by the transgender community, who are amongst the most marginalised in Pakistani society. Students also partnered up with a non-profit, TransPride Society to build awareness and spread positive messages of inclusion, love and human dignity.

If Beaconhouse School System Gulshan Middle 1 were to win the World’s Best School Prize for Community Collaboration, it would use the money in two ways. The first would be to allocate some of the money to the student council and community services that would expand their activities. The second use would be used to upgrade the ICT and science lab facilities in order to help spread the school’s resources abroad and foster collaboration with institutions internationally.