ISLAMABAD: Laiba Ali, a teenager from Khan Qilla, a village near Nowshera, says she could not get formal education due to the unavailability of schools near her village and because her father, who is a farmer, could not afford to send her to school in Nowshera city.

`Last year, a non-government organisation offered to help the women in the village get educated and I accepted the offer without hesitation because I always wanted to be able to read and write,` Ms Ali told participants of a conference titled `M-Literacy: Navigating Barriers, Empowering Women, Showcasing the Mobile Based Adult Female Literacy Programme` on Wednesday.

The conference was hosted by the think tank, Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS).

Under the mobile based women`s literacyprogramme, 160 teachers and 16 social mobilisers were trained who then taught 4,049 women between the ages of 15 and 35.

Classes were arranged at first during the nine-month course and students were then taught via mobile phones.

Ms Ali said that after the course, she can now read newspapers, do mathematical calculations and understand various concepts.

One of the teachers, Ruqiya Manzoor said that women cannot go to school due to cultural issues and that they can now be educated using mobile phones.

`The women who participated in this course were not able to write their names and a number of women were not able to read their utility bills and whether the bill was theirs or the neighbours,` he said.

A social mobilise, Najma Sehar said that after they completed the course, the women cannot get employment and can also understand and use technology.

She said the programme which was com-pleted in eight districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa should be introduced across the country.

Explaining the programme, an I-SAPS research fellow, Ahmed Ali said that women in the rural areas were not allowed to go outside their homes, which is why adult learning centres were established in houses in 150 villages and local women from nearby villages were hired as teachers so that people would send their daughters to be educated without hesitation.

`People were then convinced to send their girls to the learning centres where they were taught from books and were then shown how to use mobile phones and their various applications,` he said `During the first three months, women learnt how to read and write two or three words and after six months, they were able to read whole sentences. Nine months into the programme, they were able to read and write newspapers,` he said.

Mr All said the programme had facedresistance from the prayers leaders of mosques, who had to be convinced as well.

However, after they had understood the programme, the prayer leaders also said they supported it.

I-SAPS Executive Director Salman Humayun said that the literacy rate in the country is 57pc, which included 68pc of all men and 45pc of women.

`There is a need to get access into homes in order to educate women and mobile technology can play a very important role. The Mobilink Foundation supported in completing the project under its corporate social responsibility.

State Minister for Information Technology and Telecom Anusha Rehman said women make up for half the population and that them being uneducated leads to a lot of problems.

`Such projects can help get access to women in far flung areas and the government will cooperate in such projects,` she said.