Welcome
Our college is now open! After seven years of fundraising by the people of Sheffield in the UK, the Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir, Mr Choudhary Abdul Majid, opened the new building in front of 600 guests on April 17, 2012. This was such a proud and exciting moment for us all.
The college opened to pupils in April 2012 and our aim is to have 400 young people learning a curriculum taught in English to take GCSE O-levels and A-levels with British examining boards. This was especially requested by parents in the area as English is still such in important international language in business and computing and has meant that pupils have to start at secondary school age in order to get their English up to the required level.
The college will be run in conjunction with the local community and will offer free education to the poorest pupils. Others will pay fees on a sliding scale (state education in the country is fee-based for all children).
The college has been built by Kashmir Earthquake Relief Fund (Sheffield), an independent, Sheffield-based charity first set up after a group of us visited Azad Kashmir over Christmas 2005, just weeks after the terrible earthquake that killed around 85,000 people on October 8, 2005.
Our UK registered charity number is 1122910.
We decided the best way to help in the rebuilding of the region was to raise the money to rebuild a girls’ college that collapsed, killing more than 270 students.
The new college is called Sheffield College, Bagh.
You can visit the photo galleries to see our work and our fundraising: one big effort was a mass sponsored climb of Ben Nevis in Scotland that raised £9,000!
During a visit by a delegation from the charity in April 2007, our special guest the 2006-7 Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Cllr Jackie Drayton, laid a foundation stone on land we accepted for the rebuilding. Sadly, the original land was deemed too unstable to be built on at that time, like much of the city of Bagh, which lies on a faultline.
We wanted to give the people of Kashmir some hope and build links of fellowship and solidarity between the communities of Bagh and Sheffield.
Although the main fundraising in Britain is now coming to an end, we intend to set up a scholarship fund to help the poorest children with costs and are also seeking qualified teachers who would like to volunteer some time at the college, including for teacher training. Please get in touch for further details via the contact page.
The college opened to pupils in April 2012 and our aim is to have 400 young people learning a curriculum taught in English to take GCSE O-levels and A-levels with British examining boards. This was especially requested by parents in the area as English is still such in important international language in business and computing and has meant that pupils have to start at secondary school age in order to get their English up to the required level.
The college will be run in conjunction with the local community and will offer free education to the poorest pupils. Others will pay fees on a sliding scale (state education in the country is fee-based for all children).
The college has been built by Kashmir Earthquake Relief Fund (Sheffield), an independent, Sheffield-based charity first set up after a group of us visited Azad Kashmir over Christmas 2005, just weeks after the terrible earthquake that killed around 85,000 people on October 8, 2005.
Our UK registered charity number is 1122910.
We decided the best way to help in the rebuilding of the region was to raise the money to rebuild a girls’ college that collapsed, killing more than 270 students.
The new college is called Sheffield College, Bagh.
You can visit the photo galleries to see our work and our fundraising: one big effort was a mass sponsored climb of Ben Nevis in Scotland that raised £9,000!
During a visit by a delegation from the charity in April 2007, our special guest the 2006-7 Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Cllr Jackie Drayton, laid a foundation stone on land we accepted for the rebuilding. Sadly, the original land was deemed too unstable to be built on at that time, like much of the city of Bagh, which lies on a faultline.
We wanted to give the people of Kashmir some hope and build links of fellowship and solidarity between the communities of Bagh and Sheffield.
Although the main fundraising in Britain is now coming to an end, we intend to set up a scholarship fund to help the poorest children with costs and are also seeking qualified teachers who would like to volunteer some time at the college, including for teacher training. Please get in touch for further details via the contact page.