Inspiring The Future

Recent couple of incidents of terrorism, Tashfeen Malik attack on Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino and Safoora Chorungi attack shocked the country. Involvement of educated youth in both incidents are proved specifically, the mastermind of saffora chorungi incident and killing of Sabeen muhamed, was a young graduate from Institute of Business Administration (IBA) Karachi these incidences focused the attention of Government, CSOs and others towards addressing the violent extremism problem in the sphere of academia. Moreover, it is believed that facilitators are present in universities, especially after Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) detained professors and students from Punjab University in suspicion of having links with a banned organization. Centre for Health and Gender Equality (CHANGE), being a believer of the fact that the destiny of a nation is shaped within the four walls of a classroom, proposes to engage professors and course coordinators in the peacebuilding process to reduce attraction of youth toward extremism with project “Inspiring the Future”. Involvement of faculty will serve as an effective tool to keep students on the right path and reduce attraction towards extremist groups and VE activities. Project starts from 30th May 2016 and ended up by 30t October 2016.

This activity was conducted in The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (IUB) (four campuses, Baghdad-ul-Jadeed Campus, Ranger, Abbasia and Khawaja Fareed within Bahawalpur). In order to conduct the activity successfully, five coordination meetings were organized; one with the Vice Chancellor and four with the administration of four campuses, to sign the MOU. This was followed by selection of university teachers (Professor and course coordinator) and organized a project launching ceremony with more than 100 invitees- faculty members of all four campuses, professors, administration along with media personnel, CVE experts, political leadership, parents and representative of district government. In consultation with the key academicians from the IUB, change were developed a short peace curricula and have developed a training manual. CHANGE had organized eight one day orientation sessions with 200 selected teachers. Each session were followed of lectures on the peace curricula with more than 2200 university students. At the end, Azam-e-Amn conference were organized, as a final event, in the main campus of the university, with 1100 participants other than direct beneficiaries. On this occasion, Faculty members and Students shared their experience and lesson learning with the participants along with suggestions to include peace content in the curriculum to ensure peace and broaden the impact of the activity. Furthermore, an oath have been taken by the professors and students to play a key role in promoting peace.