Educating Pakistan

Pakistan society intended Seema Aziz to be a wife and mother. Her father arranged for her to get married at a young age, and by her early thirties she had a comfortable life as a Lahore housewife, married to a chemical engineer.

Then she took charge of her own fate. In the late 1970s, well before the era of jihad, Pakistan was flooded with western products. People began wearing jeans and T-shirts, leading Seema to conclude that there was a market for high-quality Pakistani clothes produced locally. She opened her first shop in 1985, when she was 34, in Lahore’s ancient cloth market. Her family told her they were ashamed because she had gone into business, but her instincts were vindicated: the clothes flew off the shelves. ‘Later I came to understand what entrepreneur means: you create a product that people don’t know they need with money that does not exist.’ Today she controls an empire of 450 Bareeze stores (translated as Blessing of God) across Pakistan and the Middle East. Seema is the country’s most successful businesswoman, which in itself makes her amazing. What makes her extraordinary, however — and a figure who should be celebrated internationally — is something else.

Seema Aziz’s schools have rarely been written about in the West. This is probably because they disprove every western prejudice about Pakistan. They are a story of success and not disaster; about hope rather than despair. They do not boost the profile of western politicians coming to the rescue of a failed state. No western aid agency helped to get them established.

Today Seema operates 256 schools, many in rural areas. They give a sound education to boys and girls who would otherwise be illiterate, and many of her alumni have gone on to become teachers themselves. Others have trained as engineers, businessmen and women, doctors, surgeons, soldiers — their lives utterly transformed by Seema Aziz and her CARE schools.