Category Archives: Children and Youth

Education brings 180 degree change in lives

Children and Youth, Education, Guest Contributor

By Fatima Sheikh |16 May 2018

KARACHI: The occasion was the golden jubilee of the Montessori Teachers Training Diploma course in Pakistan. Sixty excited and smiling fresh graduates stepped on the stage to place tapers in a neat row, as a female voice introduced them as “the bearers of the flame of education” that have guided children through the ages.

This course is conducted in Pakistan by the Montessori Teachers’ Training Centre (MTTC), Karachi, The MTTC trains teachers to work with children aged between two-and-a-half to six years. It is the only training centre in Pakistan recognized by and affiliated with AMI, Amsterdam. The MTTC was established in 1999 and is governed by a Board of Governors. It is registered with the Government of Sindh under Section 42 of the Companies Ordinance. Continue reading Education brings 180 degree change in lives →

Food paradoxes

Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Economy, Human Rights, Islamisation, Justice, Labour, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

HAS the sight of a child scavenging for food from an overflowing garbage bin made your heart bleed? This is common in Karachi, where kitchen waste containing a lot of cooked food is thrown away. This child is one of the 31.5 per cent of under-fives in Pakistan who were found to be underweight by the 2011 National Nutrition Survey. Nearly 43.7pc were categorised as ‘stunted’. The figures are expected to rise in the NNS currently under way. Continue reading Food paradoxes →

Cure or perish

Children and Youth, General
Behbud’s mobile TB clinic

By Zubeida Mustafa

A SHORT skit and a poster exhibition by children of the Behbud School on World TB Day came as a stark reminder that the scourge of tuberculosis continues to menace our society.

I wondered how many of those young artists and performers had had a personal encounter with the disease. This was likely because the incidence of TB in Pakistan continues to be pretty high, with 518,000 new cases being diagnosed every year, making it the fifth largest TB-infected country in the world. There is no way of knowing how many cases are not even detected. Continue reading Cure or perish →

Guns or books?

Balochistan, Books, Children and Youth, Economy, Education, Justice, Law & Order

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE infamous legacy of ‘enforced disappearances’ that the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet left behind has, unfortunately, been picked up by Pakistan. This phenomenon is today a source of great human agony in the country with thousands believed to have been abducted, many for political reasons.

Balochistan has suffered much. One cannot be certain about who is behind this torturous form of suppression of the freedom of expression. One hears of the ‘agencies’, Baloch dissidents, RAW agents, religiously inspired militants and others being involved. Continue reading Guns or books? →

This Pakistani Festival Makes Education a Fun Activity

Children and Youth, Culture and the Arts, Education
tif Badar leads children in an interactive theater workshop at the Children’s Literature Festival in Lahore, Pakistan, in January.
By Zubeida Mustafa

In January 2018, Lahore, the seat of government of Pakistan’s largest province, Punjab, played host to the Children’s Literature Festival (CFL), a unique experiment in making education a fun activity. Thousands of children gathered on the scenic lawns of the historic Lahore Fort to hear stories, listen to music and songs, and watch plays and dances.

But this was not an entertainment event alone. It was more like a gigantic, unconventional school, and in many cases the children were their own teachers.

January’s festival was not entirely new for the people of Lahore. In 2011 a similar event—albeit one a bit more serious—was held on the Punjab Public Library grounds. In 2014 Lahore again played host to the CLF. Continue reading This Pakistani Festival Makes Education a Fun Activity →