This year, Dawn Newspaper reports that official statistics released present a bleak picture showing 22.84 million children are still out of school. A horrifying 52 percent of children in Sindh are outside the education system.
The Directorate of Literacy & Non-Formal Education (NFE), Government of Sindh, headed by Sir Muhammad Alam Thaheem, in collaboration with UNICEF, arranged a Provincial Non-Formal Basic Education “stock-take” with relevant stakeholders at the Pearl Continental hotel in October.
At this meeting, development partners of the Directorate presented NFE with their models. JICA, UNESCO, USAID and UNICEF all gave key data on the progress and plans to reduce the number of unschooled kids. The Partners and NGOs gave presentations on key learning.
Youth Together for Human Rights Education was invited to give their presentation at the one-day consultation to present key learning from their NFE programme with stakeholders.
The aim of the conference was to gain a mutual understanding and capitalisation on the existing learning situation, how to upscale NFE in the province, and to determine how the stakeholders could provide technical support.
In her presentation, Madam Fareeda Abbasi, CEO of Youth Together for Human Rights Education, spoke about her project which is currently educating over 50 Street/unschooled kids. For various reasons, these kids have missed out on primary education. She spoke passionately on the need for high quality teacher training and how to develop creativity and critical thinking skills in children.
Madam Fareeda described the model her organisation is implementing to train teachers, educate these children, train their parents and how she is working to develop the character of these children positively. She also spoke about the work her organisation is doing to bring about a raised awareness of social responsibility in those who are privileged in society.
Through everyone’s joint efforts and emphasis on teacher training, she said, the problem of unschooled kids in Sindh would only be a mention in the pages of history.
Sir Alam concluded the conference by saying that the Seminar had been very successful. He said the enthusiasm shown by the participants was contagious, and the Directorate hopes to use the suggested solutions in the future.
For more information, contact Youth Together for Human Rights Education.
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