MISHAL launches Education Advocacy Program, “ILM-o-AGAHI”

MISHAL launches Education Advocacy Program, “ILM-o-AGAHI”

Every child has the right of free education in Pakistan, but only 59% children enrolled in schools.

Mishal Pakistan has launched ‘ILM-o-AGAHI’ Education Advocacy Program to sensitize the media and policy makers to build consensus on priority education issues. Under the ILM-o-AGAHI initiative, Mishal will conduct education journalism workshops for reporters and editors responsible for education related content. Round table meetings and provincial level education conferences will create consensus among the stakeholders to highlight education issues among media, educationists, policy-makers and legislators. This fourteen month long activity is being funded by Ilm Ideas (a 3 year UKaid funded program).

According to Article 25-A of the constitution of Pakistan, “it is the right of every child to have free education and the government to provide free education to every child”, however according to the Economic Survey of Pakistan (2011-12) only 59% of children have been enrolled in schools across Pakistan.

Asif Farooqui, Program Manager, ILM-o-AGAHI, while discussing the salient features of the initiative said that, a learning platform for journalists on education would be developed as a ready reference for journalists working on education related issues. He further said, “Mishal is also introducing special categories on education journalism in the upcoming annual journalism “AGAHI Awards 2014” to promote education journalism in Pakistan.”

Through the ILM-o-AGAHI initiative, a series of education journalism workshops will be held across Pakistan for education reporters. The workshops aims to increase the capacity of journalists and improve coverage on education related issues in media. 30 education reporters will be selected to participate in each workshop, to enhance their understanding on the key education issues identified in this initiative and build the skill-set of journalists to capture community’s perspective and voice when reporting on the aforementioned issues.

These education journalism workshops will be held in Islamabad, Peshawar, D.I. Khan, FATA, Lahore, Multan, Bahawalpur, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Quetta, Mirpur and Muzaffarabad in Azad Jammu and Kashmir throughout March and April 2014.

Mishal Pakistan is the partner institute of the Center for International Media Ethics and the Global Competitiveness and Benchmarking Networks of the World Economic Forum. Mishal assists the forum in creating soft-data on Pakistan, identifying Pakistan’s competitiveness challenges including primary health & education and higher education.