Islamabad:Prime Minister’s National Coordinator for Tourism, Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan, issued a powerful call to action on December 11, urging Pakistan’s leading business and industrial groups to allocate one per cent of their annual profits toward educating the country’s 26 million out-of-school children.
Addressing a gathering of Islamabad’s top corporate leadership, Khan emphasised that business-led philanthropy must become a cornerstone of Pakistan’s national development strategy. He called education “the single most transformative investment for Pakistan’s future,” and said the private sector has both the capacity and responsibility to help drive that change.
Hosted by RCCI President Usman Shaukat, the event was organised to rally support for Green Crescent Trust’s (GCT) education initiatives in Sindh. Khan praised the business community’s presence, saying it reflected their growing recognition that Pakistan’s economic rise is directly tied to uplifting its most underserved children.
Khan stressed that transparent, accountable and well-directed giving can accelerate educational access across remote and deprived regions far more rapidly than public funding alone. He urged businesses to build long-term partnerships with trusted organisations and to embed social responsibility into their corporate ethos.
“Strong public-private collaboration is the only way Pakistan can ensure that every child, regardless of geography or background, has access to a quality education,” Khan said. “If the business community steps forward with unity and purpose, we can change the country’s trajectory within years, not decades.”
He also commended GCT’s longstanding work in underserved areas, acknowledging their network of schools and teachers, but emphasised that Pakistan’s education crisis requires far greater and broader private-sector mobilisation. Khan welcomed GCT’s decision to expand beyond Sindh from 2026, describing it as a step toward a truly national movement against illiteracy.
