Pakistan's Karachi is one of the most dangerous cities on Earth. Street crime and religious and political violence have made life difficult for the city's youth. But in the neighborhood of Lyari, a small community center is offering a place for young people to find shelter and thrive.
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00:00Karachi, a megacity of 20 million people.
00:04It's Pakistan's largest city
00:06and the economic center of a country in crisis.
00:10The past few years have been hard on Pakistan.
00:142022 was especially devastating.
00:17The country was hit with a political crisis.
00:20Oil and gas prices soared after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
00:24Inflation was spiraling out of control.
00:27And then came the floods.
00:30The summer monsoons dumped twice their normal rainfall,
00:33submerging a third of the country
00:36and driving millions of farmers and rural residents
00:39to the cities in search of work.
00:41And with that desperation came a surge in crime,
00:45trapping the city's younger generation in the middle.
00:49Against this backdrop,
00:50in the tough Karachi neighborhood of Liari,
00:53there's Mehrgarh, the house of love,
00:57a place of music, art, and discussion.
01:00For students, it's a refuge
01:02from the violence outside its walls.
01:22Mehrgarh was founded by five Liari locals
01:25who dreamt of a better world for their young neighbors.
01:28Co-founder Parveen Naz sees a deeper purpose
01:31for the space she's created.
01:32Basically, the concept we came up with was
01:36to counter the violence, extremism.
01:39We're facing too much violence,
01:41whether it's religious violence or terrorism.
01:46We're facing all kinds of violence here.
01:48So we wanted to work on countering all of that.
01:52That was Mehrgarh's goal.
01:54The center offers workshops for teachers and students.
01:57It hosts open mics for music and poetry.
02:00There are art classes and book drives.
02:02It's a gathering place for the city's young residents.
02:05I do my art work as soon as I get here.
02:08I make drawings.
02:11We also have Wi-Fi here.
02:14I can learn through social media,
02:17like how to edit videos,
02:20or learn some art skills.
02:22So I practice here.
02:24Young people here also have access to 24-hour electricity,
02:28backed up by batteries that charge
02:30during the patches of time the neighborhood has power.
02:33It's an oasis, a shining light in the dark,
02:36but a small one.
02:38We need to work on that.
02:40If you go to every street,
02:42you'll find drug sellers.
02:44You'll find young people holding pistols
02:47and snatching drugs.
02:54There are no easy answers to Pakistan's woes
02:57or the long wave of violence
02:59that has its citizens on edge.
03:01But for the young people of Karachi's Lehari neighborhood,
03:04at least there is still a place for hope.
03:06James Lin and Jonathan Kaplan for Taiwan Plus.