The building is only half the idea. The other half is a place where the boys who live here, and the young people of Jafar e Tayyar who walk in from the neighbourhood, learn skills that earn a living — from computers and AI tools to practical vocational skills.
Paying an orphan's expenses is charity. It is necessary, and we are doing it. But it ends the day the money ends.
Teaching a young person to earn is different. A boy who leaves this home at eighteen able to fix a phone, design a shop sign, run a small business's accounts in a spreadsheet, or use AI tools to write, translate and learn, does not need the next fundraiser. Neither does the neighbour's daughter who took the evening class.
That is why the Orphanage Home is not only bedrooms and a kitchen. It holds the Multitech Center — a computer lab and skills workshop open to the whole of Jafar e Tayyar Society, a neighbourhood of more than 70,000 people in Karachi's Malir district where, this year alone, over a hundred children earned A+ grades in the matric board and one placed third in all of Karachi. The talent is already there. What is missing is the door to walk through.
SHARE Pakistan already runs Vocational Training Centres in Karachi and KPK, a zero-markup loan programme (LIFT) that has put sewing machines and repair kits into the hands of small earners, and a job-placement service that matches people with partner employers. The Multitech Center brings all three under the same roof as the home.
Built around tools that cost nothing to use, so the centre can run on the price of electricity and a teacher — not on software licences.
The skills every job in the city now assumes and no school in the neighbourhood teaches.
The one thing that will make a graduate of this lab different from every other computer-course graduate in Karachi.
Every shop, tailor and tuition centre in the neighbourhood needs a sign, a menu, a flyer and a WhatsApp post. Someone local should be making them.
A graduate of tracks two and three has something to sell. This track teaches how to sell it.
Practical, hands-on skills such as those SHARE Pakistan's vocational instructors already teach, of the kind its centres in Karachi and KPK already run.
The exact course list is being confirmed with SHARE Pakistan and will be published here word for word, not guessed at.
A skill without tools is a frustration. SHARE Pakistan's LIFT programme offers zero-markup loans of PKR 50,000 to 5,00,000 for equipment and stock, and its placement service connects graduates with partner employers matched to their skill set.
The thirty residents use the lab as part of their school day. Evening and weekend sessions are for young people from the surrounding streets.
Every tool in tracks one to four has a free tier open to anyone. Lab computers run under accounts held by SHARE staff, in supervised sessions, so no child needs a licence, a card or an unsupervised login.
The number that matters is how many graduates are earning a year later — a job, a loan taken and repaid, a freelance client. That is the figure we will report back to donors.
The Computer Lab is one of the seventeen sponsorable spaces in the home. Take it whole, or a share of it, and your family’s brick goes on the donor wall at the entrance: “Recite Fatiha for” the name you choose.