Muhammad Saqib 
Rs. 28,000 per semester at a public university is manageable for many households. For a family running on a combined income of around Rs. 30,000 a month — a father working as a daily wage sweeper, a mother doing domestic work in a few nearby houses — it wasn’t. The obvious first step was HEC’s … Read more
Private IT bootcamps in Pakistan routinely charge Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 150,000 for the same web development and freelancing skills that show up constantly in online course ads. For a student who’s just finished FSc with decent marks but no money for a four-year degree, that price tag closes the door before it opens. That … Read more
Dera Ghazi Khan shows up in policy documents under “underserved regions” far more often than it shows up in anything written about career options for young people actually living there. One story from the city: a failed first attempt at FA exams, followed by a year that wasn’t a gap year in any planned sense … Read more
Every entry-level job listing seems to want the same impossible thing: one to two years of experience, aimed squarely at candidates who are 22 and have never had a job. It’s the catch-22 every fresh graduate runs into, and it doesn’t resolve itself just because a degree is good and the grades are decent. One … Read more
Every Ramzan, the same pattern repeats across most neighborhoods. The announcement goes out — subsidized flour, ghee, pulses, and sugar, distributed through designated stores and Utility Stores. Prices cut significantly. Stock limited. First come, first served. By day three, a large share of eligible families still haven’t heard about it. By day seven, stores are … Read more
A private kiryana shop is convenient — familiar faces, home delivery, buy-now-pay-later on trust. It’s also, for most basic staples, running 20-30% more expensive than it needs to be. That gap is exactly what Utility Stores exist to close, though plenty of households go years without using them simply out of habit. One Karachi household … Read more
Free rashan distributions tied to BISP and Ehsaas-registered households open every Ramzan, and often at other points during the year — flour, sugar, ghee, and dal, distributed at designated points to reduce food costs for eligible families. The catch is timing: these windows are short, and notification isn’t always reliable. One BISP Kafaalat beneficiary — … Read more
Losing a household’s only earner doesn’t just bring grief — it brings an immediate, practical crisis: who pays next month’s rent, and how. That was the situation for one woman whose husband, the family’s sole earner, died of a heart attack two years ago. Three children, ages thirteen, ten, and seven. A rented house. A … Read more
What actually happens to a person’s income when a disability makes their existing job impossible to keep? For one former schoolteacher, the answer came fast. A road accident left him using a wheelchair. The school had no ramp, no accessible bathroom, no way to reach his second-floor classroom — and within a year, the job … Read more
A cancer diagnosis rarely arrives with a price tag attached — the first conversation after the hospital visit is almost never about treatment options. It’s about money. In one such case, the oncologist had outlined three things: surgery, chemotherapy, a specific medication. The costs: somewhere between Rs. 400,000 and Rs. 700,000, depending on how treatment … Read more