Ten CDC employees from different departments volunteered for the Rahbar Program (Oct’10-Jan’11 session) of The Citizens Foundation. Earlier, CDC’s Human Resource department arranged for a special presentation by a TCF team which apprised CDC’s employees about the Rahbar Program and invited them to join it for its seventh cycle starting from October 2010. The HR department and CDC’s management also encouraged the ten volunteering employees by giving them days off on Saturdays to participate in this program. 

TCF Rahbar is a Mentorship Program aimed at the development of youth as responsible individuals and as productive members of society. The role of a mentor in Rahbar Program is to encourage the mentee to develop a positive thought process, a vision for his/her future, the plan to realize that vision and the capacity to deal with the failures that he/she will inadvertently confront on this journey. Through the program, a group of six to eight students are assigned to a pair of mentors for a duration of 10 Saturdays. 

Conducted in Karachi and Lahore, the program has completed six successful cycles so far. In the brief span of two years, TCF has been able to reach almost 2000 students with the support of more than 400 volunteer mentors from all walks of life. The mentors have included people employed in the corporate sector, housewives, lawyers, engineers, scientists, doctors, teachers and retired personnel - just about anyone who would like to make a meaningful difference in young lives.  

The Citizens Foundation is a professionally managed, non-profit organization working in the field of education by building and managing schools in less privileged areas of Pakistan. The vision of TCF is to remove barriers of class and privilege and to make the citizens of Pakistan Agents of Positive Change. The organization believes that access to basic education is the right of each individual and not a privilege. TCF was set up in 1995 by a group of citizens concerned with the dismal state of education in Pakistan. As of 2010, TCF has established 660 purpose-built school units nationwide with an enrollment of 92,000 students.