Low-income students from rural Pakistan receive scholarships to leading schools

For seven long years, I forgot about myself and postponed my personal dreams.

For his first five years of school, Teerath Mal attended class under a tree in the open air. His was one of two schools in the 10,000-person village of Thana Bola Khan in the Sindhi district of Jamshoro in Pakistan. Now Mal, 33, is a freshly-minted MBA graduate from the Institute of Business Administration, a leading university housed in a brick campus with manicured gardens and computer labs, a world and 150 km away in the bustling port city of Karachi. Mal made it from the deserts of rural Sindh to Karachi's congested streets with hard work, some savings and a USAID scholarship.

Mal is one of 33 graduate and undergraduate students from rural Sindh and Balochistan to receive tuition, book and boarding expenses from a scholarship program funded by USAID and implemented by Khushhali Bank, a government-established microfinance institution. Students have the option to work for the bank after graduation, providing loans to low-income rural communities usually serviced by private moneylenders. During his years managing his father's rice processing business, Mal paid interest as high as 120 percent to such moneylenders.

Mal has found his passion in finance management. Soon after finishing his bachelor's degree, he steered his father's troubled 12-year-old business toward profitability and put his two younger brothers through medical school. "For seven long years, I forgot about myself and postponed my personal dreams," Mal said. After his brothers moved abroad to practice medicine, Mal knew it was time to focus on his own ambitions. He applied for an MBA and moved to Karachi, taking his wife and two daughters and his life savings of 200,000 rupees (about $3,333) with him for tuition. Planning to work as a math tutor to make ends meet, Mal landed the USAID scholarship a semester into his two-year degree. Now he plans to apply his MBA to a financial management job in Karachi before moving back to interior Sindh. He wants to help rural communities get access to low-interest small loans. "I want to contribute and give back something to the society I owe so much."

Two years ago, neighbors he hadn't met in years came to visit Mal out of curiosity and admiration when they heard of his ad-mission to business school in Karachi. Thanks to USAID, other students can look at Mal and know that if they want, there are horizons waiting to open up for them, too.