Baela Raza Jamil is the Trustee for the Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA), Center for Education and Consciousness (CEC). Baela, a former technical advisor to the Federal Ministry of Education is an activist at heart, leading and associated with many social movements in Pakistan; these include the largest citizen led learning accountability initiative ASER Pakistan, Right to Education and the Children’s/Teachers’ Literature Festival . She is on the boards of many government, academic and civil society organizations in Pakistan and on the Advisory Boards of the Global Monitoring Report (GMR), Learning Assessment at the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) and Global Business Coalition for Education. Baela is a member of regional and international professional associations such as BAICE, CIES, SAFED, ARNEC & ASBAE

ITA was formed and registered in June 2000. ITA’s primary focus is comprehensive education reform beginning with public sector schools, which are in a state of decay and degeneration. It also works with other sectors of basic education in non-formal and literacy programs for the disadvantaged groups such as child labor, destitute, women and youth. ITA works across formal, non-formal education from, ECE up to secondary levels and for teacher education, in pre-service, in-service and certification programs. Policy and advocacy are an embedded focus of the organization. ITA is in the business of developing workable and upgraded education models as well as social policy guidelines. These are appropriate for urban and rural situations alike across the education spectrum for public and non-elite private schools/institutions. It believes in working through and with partners across local communities, districts and provinces. ITA’s critical partner for action is the public sector at all levels and its institutions.

ITA’s partners include Community Based Organizations (CBOs), NGOs, INGOs, district governments, provincial/federal governments, private corporate sector, philanthropists, expatriate Pakistanis and donors.
The current work and partnerships extend across Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Rawalpindi, Sahiwal, Gujrat, Jhang, Chiniot, Multan, Muzaffargarh, Chakwal, Rahim Yar Khan, Miyanwali, Faisalabad, Nankana, Sindh, Balochistan (Gwadar, Jaffarababad, Quetta, Sibi) NWFP (Charsadda, Swabi, D.I.Khan/Peshawar), FATA, Islamabad Capital Territory and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). ITA is open to working in contiguous districts within and across provinces. In all four provinces and areas ITA works through its teacher educator/professional development program “teachers without frontiers’

Contact Information:
Address:Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi
70-B/1, Gulberg III, Lahore, Pakistan
Tel:(+92) (42) 35711107-9
E-mail:info@itacec.org
Website:www.itacec.org

Ameena Saiyid joined OUP in 1979 in Lahore, working in sales and editorial, with responsibility for the Punjab and NWFP, and later moved to Karachi. She left OUP in 1986 to set up her ownpublishing house, Saiyid Books, which grew into a successful business. In 1988, she was invited byOUP to rejoin as head of OUP Pakistan becoming the first woman to head a multinational company in Pakistan. In 2005, Ameena became the first woman in Pakistan to be awarded the Order of the British Empire. The OBE was awarded in recognition of her services to women’s rights, education, democracy, intellectual property rights and Anglo-Pakistan relations. In April 2010, she became the first woman elected to be president of the 150-year-old Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI).
Taking over as head of OUP Pakistan in 1988, Ameena rapidly built OUP Pakistan’s publishing programme to the extent that they started publishing a book a week, instead of a book a year in earlier days. She recruited and trained editors, designers and illustrators, sales and marketing staff, and expanded OUP operations from Karachi and Lahore to the rest of the country, opening offices in Islamabad, Peshawar, Multan and Faisalabad. She established a network of nine bookshops in Pakistan, and organized the first nationwide book fair held simultaneously in twenty towns and cities in Pakistan. Today there is no school in the private sector in Pakistan which is not using an Oxford book. Ameena grew theUrdu publishing programme exponentially. In 1997, OUP Pakistan published 37 books in the Jubilee Series to celebrate 50 years of Pakistan’s independence.
Cramped by the small size of a residential house in Karachi from which OUP Pakistan was operating, Ameena bought a two-acre plot in the Korangi Industrial Area and built an office of 40,000 sq ft and a warehouse of 20,000 sq ft. She equipped the new office with SAP, an integrated software solution that revolutionised its business practices in areas such as budget, liquidity control, supply and material management, distribution, customer services and royalties. She put in place global best practices and benchmarks to enable OUP Pakistan to operate at a high level of efficiency. The new office building is a celebration of Pakistani art, crafts and culture in which the works of Pakistani artists andcraftsmen are proudly showcased.
Ameena’s aims are to publish and sell as many books as possible, to develop a large number of bilingual dictionaries in Pakistan’s national and regional languages, to set the standards for school textbooks and children’s books, to employ the best possible people, to manage the business in an ethical manner, to be a good employer, to continue publishing textbooks for schools, colleges, and universities, to contribute to the academic community, to promote readership, and to project a positive and soft image of Pakistan and Pakistani authors. Ameena has been working to promote Pakistani authors by publishing and promoting their books in Pakistan and abroad, and by ensuring that their intellectual property rights are protected. Ameena wants to make writing by Pakistani authors worth their while so that they continue to write and grow the literary treasure and heritage of Pakistan.

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP Pakistan is committed to promoting the reading culture and to improving the intellectual content of life in Pakistan. It has an extensive school and college textbook publishing programme, which addresses the need for books that are both of high quality and specific to the environment. It has gained a reputation for publishing well-researched academic and general books, which are considered to be authoritative and definitive works on Pakistan.

Contact Information:
Address:No.38 sector 15 Korangi Industrial Area Karachi 74900, Pakistan
UAN:+92-21-111-oxford
Tel:+92-21-35071580-86
Fax:+92-21-35055071-72
E-mail:oup.pk@oup.com
Website:www.oup.com.pk

Nargis Sultana is currently working with Foundation Open Society Institute (FOSI) - Pakistan. She has vast experience of working in education sector, governance, other social sectors and research on social and economic related issues.

During her academic career, she received several awards and distinctions. She has a number of publications to her credit, some of which have been published in the Pakistan Development Review, the country's leading journal of economic research. She has also co-authored a book entitled Pakistan's Economic Performance: 1947 to 1993 - A Descriptive Analysis.

She has worked as Education Specialist at MSU/World Bank, Senior Programme Officer (Education) in DFID, Research Manager in IFPRI/USAID, and also worked with FAO/UNDP.

The Foundation Open Society Institute–Pakistan’s key areas of activity are education, media, government transparency and accountability, justice and human rights, and economic policy. The largest efforts continue to be in the area of education. The office is committed to ensuring quality education for all children in Pakistan by supporting research and advocacy work by NGO coalitions, research and educational institutions, and teachers’ associations.
The office supports a number of pilot projects in both rural and urban areas that bring the government and civil society groups together to improve education quality in public and private institutions, especially through projects for teacher training, early childhood education, and school governance.