Pakistan

The largest equine welfare organisation in Pakistan – we’ve been helping working animals, and the families that depend on them for over 30 years.

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About

At a glance

Pakistan is the world's fifth-most populous country with a population of more than 225.2 million. (Source: World Bank)
It is home to over 6 million working horses, donkeys and mules (Source: FAO Stat) – providing support to an estimated 36 million people.
It has approximately 20,000 traditional brick kilns – where many equines work in extremely challenging conditions.
Brooke has worked in over 1,000 communities (515 Brick kilns, 200 Coal mines, and 287 workplace communities) improving the direct health and welfare of 96,510 equids and 85,099 people beneficiaries.
We also trained 810 Animal health providers (AHPs) including vets, paraprofessionals, and farriers ensuring sustainable practice.

Take a closer look

Ninety-five percent of the total equine population in Pakistan are working equines, the majority being used for transportation of people and goods, while the others are used in brick kilns, coalmines and agriculture. A recent study has shown that a single working animal supports up to eight people’s livelihood in a family.

With so many people dependent on their working animals, it’s essential that they receive the appropriate care and attention to ensure their lives are free from pain, disease and distress, so that they can remain healthy and productive. It’s also critical for the families and communities they support, as they are left extremely vulnerable if their animals are unable to work.

The Brooke Pakistan community-based equine welfare program is working to ensure healthy working animals for the world’s poorest communities through service delivery, community development, advocacy, partnership, applied research and ‘sharing the load’ strategy.

Find out more about our work in Pakistan

Tel: +92 42 36672699
[email protected]
Brooke Pakistan, 9/295 Sarwar Road, Lahore Cantt, Pakistan 54810

Our work

What we’re doing

Focused on the three strategic change goals of the Brooke Global Strategy 2025, we are currently working in over 40 districts across Pakistan to:

Transform equid welfare in communities.
Influence the visibility and inclusion of working equids.
Develop sustainable animal health systems.

But we’re not doing it alone. We understand that the key to meeting these goals is often partnership. By working with others, we can not only reach more animals and marginalised communities, but get their voices heard on a bigger stage and influence relevant policies and processes too.

Current projects

Brick kilns

Conditions for animals are exceptionally harsh in the brick kilns of Pakistan. They often work long hours every day without the water, food and rest they need.

When they can work no more because of exhaustion, injury or illness, they're abandoned to die because their owners are unable to access or pay for their care.

Over the past years, due to the generosity from our supporters and the Alborada Trust’s belief in our work, Brooke Pakistan has been able to bring critically important, often lifesaving, welfare improvements to thousands of working equids and their owners.

Coal mines

Our work in coal mines is especially difficult because conditions for the miners themselves are very poor. Some of our work in this area includes building trust within the mining communities through the provision of basic infrastructure, such as shelters and water troughs, as well as providing first aid.

Once this trust has been built, we organise community meetings to teach basic management practices (such as grooming and hoof cleaning, wound management, feeding and water awareness) and recruit welfare champions who promote good practice more widely.

We also help train veterinary and other local service providers (farriers, saddlers and feed sellers), and ensure the miners have access to affordable and good quality services.

Empowering communities

We take a community development approach that empowers the communities of Pakistan that depend on working equines. It helps them to understand and take collective action to address the equine welfare issues affecting their lives, and the lives of the equines upon which they depend.

Advocacy work

Brooke Pakistan is committed to influencing civil society, government and non-government organisations – raising a voice for equine welfare and lobbying for their inclusion in policy.

The future for our projects

By 2025 we aim to sustainably improve the quality of life for 50,000 equids working in 2,000 brick kilns and make coal mines a significantly safer place to work.

We want to positively change the behaviour and practices of equine owners across Pakistan so they can better care for their animals. And have big ambitions around influencing policy and practice change for animal welfare at all levels.

We will achieve this by:

Improving the attitudes and knowledge of equine health and welfare within equine owning households.
Giving equine owners access to quality animal healthcare services/welfare resources.
Helping equine owners become more resilient to external shocks threatening their animals’ welfare and have access to sustainable/alternative income-generating opportunities (critical in light of COVID).
Ensuring animal health/welfare is mainstreamed in educational institutes.
Improving the existing skills and capacities of Animal Health Providers (AHPs).
Identifying and training community change agents.
Ensuring National and Provincial level policies and practices incorporate equine and animal welfare at all levels.
Getting politicians and media to highlight animal welfare and the needs of marginalised communities who own them.
Ensuring Disaster Risk Reduction strategies that include animal welfare and the needs of marginalised communities who own them, are on the agenda of government and non-government organisations.

Partners and partnership development

Brooke Pakistan firmly embeds partnership principles towards equine welfare in its operation, with international, national and provincial stakeholders, striving for inclusion of working equines in animal values of animal welfare, in addition to support of human livelihood.

Partnerships help us to reach greater numbers of needy animals and marginalised communities. They also help us to build a case for alignment of equine health with global initiatives such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, One Health and One Welfare. They lay the foundations for initiating dialogue with potential advocacy allies to demonstrate how equine health and welfare plays a pivotal role in these endeavours. To ensure a world where working equines are free from suffering, it is critical to understand this world, the paradigm it operates in, and the battles it is fighting.

Current Brooke Pakistan partners

Brooke Pakistan has 16 partners in operational areas.

Project partners (funded):

1) Sindh Rural Support Organization (SRSO)
2) Sukaar Foundation
3) Labour Education Foundation(LEF)

Strategic partners

4) World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
5) Brick Kilns Owners Association (BKOA)
6) Pakistan Girls Guide Association (PGGA)
7) Association for Biorisk Management (ABM)
8) Ripha College of Veterinary Sciences

Government partners (also strategic)

9) Livestock & Dairy Development Punjab (L&DD)
10) Livestock & Dairy Development Sindh (L&DD)
11) Livestock & Dairy Development KPK (L&DD)
12) The University of Agriculture Faisalabad(UAF)
13) The University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences Lahore(UVAS)
14) BahauddinZakariya University Multan(BZU)
15) The University of Agriculture Peshawar(UAP)
16) Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Punjab (SPCA)

The Alborada Trust

The Alborada Trust has been an instrumental partner for Brooke-Pakistan in recent years, catalysing lasting change in the brick kiln industry there. Between April 2017 and March 2021 the Trust supported work to transform the welfare of working horses, donkeys and mules in the brick kilns, directly improving the lives of 12,627 animals in 515 kilns (as well countless more indirectly). Given the success of this project, in 2021 the Trust agreed to support the scale-up of this work.

Brooke Pakistan Brick kiln Communities Map 2022-23

Success stories

Keeping the community covered during a crisis

During one of our regular community meetings in Karachi, we started talking about the importance of savings with equine owners and users, and how they can help you be more resilient in the face of an emergency. Following this conversation, a workplace community of 12 members started contributing to a savings box. Each member gave a small amount that was used to help maintain a saddlery tool kit and first aid kits for the equines of the community.

When COVID-19 struck, lockdown prevented our trained master saddler from getting to the community to provide his invaluable services. So, he contacted a local equine owner called Ali, who he had trained in basic saddlery skills, and asked if he could help support his fellow equine owners in his absence. Thanks to the savings of the 12 community members Ali had all the tools and supplies he needed to repair his own saddle and those of others.

The community could see the clear benefits of this sustainable approach to savings and skills development. And now they are committed to improving their skills on equine farriery and have started to save to purchase an emergency farriery kit.

Challenges