Infectious Diseases

Education about Life Skills is simply called Life Skills Based Education. Our definition of Life Skills Based Education is to provide information with appropriate knowledge to individuals especially youngsters in the light of Islamic and cultural values, equipping them with skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, self-awareness, self-esteem, sociability and interpersonal communication. Another objective of Life Skills Based Education is to build their attitude required to safeguard themselves from social evils such as Child Sexual Abuse, Emotional aspect of growing age, Peer Pressure, Addiction, Child Marriages, Violence against Women and HIV/AIDS.

With our advocacy and campaigning efforts, WEG managed to engage all relevant stakeholders including religious scholars, government officials, curriculum and textbook wings, educationists, teachers and parents in the development of Pakistan’s first Life Skills Based Education (LSBE) curriculum in 2014. The curriculum included comprehensive training manual and textbooks that contained useful information backed up by Islamic teachings. Religious leaders used our guidebook to influence the community’s opinion and decisions through Friday Sermons.

Although it was a rocky path to develop the LSBE curriculum but the difficult challenge was to institutionalize Life Skills Based Education (LSBE) in the school curriculum. We partnered with government institutes and strengthened the public sector by creating a conducive environment to take initiative on this matter. We collaborated with all four provincial education departments and textbook boards and ultimately the curriculum was adopted by National Curriculum Council, Federal Ministry of Education.

We launched a behavioural transformation campaign to address this sensitive issue and brought significant change in breaking the silence. Finding it most relevant to the issue, we introduced the concept of “edutainment” for development. For the first time, Pakistan Television (PTV) aired an 18-episode drama serial ‘Kis Sey Kahoon’ to highlight the need of LSBE curriculum. To educate families and young kids, we developed a series of skits, public service messages and street theatre on issues of adolescent health and behaviour.