Tabarak Rehman In Conversation with TCF's Co-Founders
In December 2024, Tabarak Rahman completed a 1,600-kilometer run across Pakistan to raise funds for The Citizens Foundation (TCF). The day after he finished in Karachi, he met the organization’s three co-founders for the first time.
What began in 1995 as a dining-table conversation has grown into one of Pakistan’s largest education movements. The founders set themselves a bold target early on: to build 1,000 schools. Today, that vision has not only been realized but far surpassed. TCF now operates more than 2,300 schools serving over 300,000 children in underserved communities across the country.
The journey began in the early 1990s with the Wednesday Club, a small group of professionals who met weekly in Karachi during a time of instability and fear. At first, education was not their focus. They considered health as their cause until they discovered that nearly forty percent of health problems were rooted in poor hygiene, which in turn traced back to a lack of education. Choosing to address the root rather than the symptom, they committed themselves to schooling. None of the six original founders had experience in teaching, building schools, or designing curricula, but they brought with them the discipline of professional management, corporate-style accountability, and systematic organization.
They funded the first five schools entirely from their own pockets, determined to establish credibility before inviting outside support. The model was intentionally designed to be lean and transparent, avoiding bureaucracy or succession issues that often weaken institutions. As visitors came to see the early schools in Karachi’s most challenging areas, the impact became undeniable. Families requested new schools for their own neighborhoods, and what began as a bold experiment soon turned into a national movement.
TCF today runs over 2,000 schools and has become the country’s largest employer of women outside the government, with more than 17,000 female staff members. The decision to hire only women as faculty was deliberate, rooted in the cultural reality that families would feel secure sending daughters to schools staffed exclusively by women. This policy not only ensured girls’ enrollment but also created unprecedented opportunities for female employment in local communities. Schools are built within neighborhoods, ensuring accessibility and trust, and a mandatory fifty-fifty gender ratio reinforces equality.
The ripple effect of TCF’s work has reached far beyond classrooms. Children bring home lessons of hygiene, discipline, and respect, gradually transforming entire households. Alumni speak with pride about their schools, with many returning as teachers, continuing the cycle of education. Other institutions in Pakistan have modeled themselves on TCF, from hospitals to empowerment programs, proving the scalability of its approach. With curriculum, books, and teacher training already being adopted by government and private schools alike, the foundation’s model is seen as franchise-ready, capable of scaling across Pakistan’s 126,000 government schools.
Three decades after that first bold commitment, the founders remain convinced they chose the right path. Their principle has never changed: compete not with organizations, but with illiteracy itself. Today, as Pakistan faces the challenge of ensuring that every child not only enters school but receives quality education, the spirit of audacity remains at the heart of TCF. “If we had not set the target of 1,000 schools,” Riaz reflected, “we might have built only 50—and it would have ended there.” For Tabarak, who crossed 1,600 kilometers fueled by the same belief in audacity, the message is clear: when the starting line is crossed, the road opens, and the movement continues.
What inspires you most about Tabarak’s journey and TCF’s mission? Let us know in the comments!
This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools.
