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Sajila Begum, a 50-year-old survivor of the devastating earthquake that hit Pakistani Kashmir in 2005 killing 74,000 people, says the word "impossible" is not in her vocabulary.Since losing her son in the quake that reduced most of her hometown to rubble, Begum has dedicated her life to bringing education to as many of the children in her impoverished neighbourhood as possible.But not content with building a school that now has 150 students, she has also created a 24-hour piped water system for her neighbours, and a micro-loan scheme for poor women in the local community.Her efforts have earned her the affectionate title of "one woman NGO," or non-government organisation, here in the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.It's not a nickname she wears lightly as never having had the opportunity to go to school, Begum says she is all too aware of the value of education.She had already opened a schoolroom in her home when, on October 8, 2005, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck the region, flattening 85 percent of Muzaffarabad, killing around 34,000 of the city's 900,000 people, injuring 56,000 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. It was Pakistan's worst ever disaster.Begum lost her home and her 21-year-old son, one of six of her own children who she raised along with her sister's two children after her death seven years ago."These two blows were too big for me, but I gathered my strength after the earthquake and decided to restart the school," she said."I went to parents and asked them to send their kids to school. We started under the open sky first, then tents and finally in a tin shelter."Whatever they were able to give she added to the compensation she received from the government on the death of her son and began work on what was effectively the only school in her neighbourhood."I had decided one thing," she says of her own large brood."That all of them will go to school and as there was no school nearby, I planned to start a new school."Begum casts an eye over the school that she built from scratch and proudly points out that she is providing education for children from nursery up to fifth grade.As she recalls the heartache and difficulties of getting started again after the earthquake, she says it was the memory of her own burning desire for knowledge, and how it went unsatisfied because her parents could not afford to send her to school, that spurred her on. To read more go to:As in the days of Noah...
