Not only is ITA sending representatives to severely affected areas to provide assistance, but they have also set up a special site dedicated to reports, updates and donations.

Khurshed, Tangi, Charsadda, 2008 Alumnus: set up relief camp in a shop which is now full. Distributed Food for 300 families; 250 sets of Kitchen Utensils. Rescued 25 people stranded in the water using raft made of tubes from cars; In Tangi, 6 villages have been wiped out and 16 damaged. People are residing in 3 government schools. 1000 families are affected.

Zaki, Peshawar, 2009 Alumnus: Surveyed Tarnad Farm, Kachauri and Zinday Camp to assess requirements. Collected and distributed relief goods along with ITA. Currently surveying Nowshera district and will then collect and distribute further relief goods on a personal basis.

Khalid, Charsadda, 2009 Alumnus: Khalid is Deputy District Officer, Charsadda. He says 12 schools are providing refuge to the locals. 4 villages have been flooded, 500 houses destroyed. Khalid set up a center for collection and distribution of food to the affected areas. Some people are still stuck in the water and the locals have constructed boats in order to get food to them.

Shabana, Nowshera, 2010 Alumna: Family village has been flooded completely. It had a population of 200,000 people. The people have shifted to their relatives houses, including Shabana’s house in Peshawar. Charity is being given on a personal basis to relatives via the provision of shelter, food and clothing. WWF is going to do a Needs Assessment Survey in which Shabana will be involved.

Fazeelat, Nowshera, 2009 Alumna: Family village has been flooded. The houses and businesses of her siblings have been destroyed. They have shifted into Fazeelat’s house. There is enough place to host them and Fazeelat is providing shelter, food and clothing. For one week, she also provided the same to female refugees and their children who were not related to her. These refugees have moved out now.

Waseem, Nathiagali, 2008 Alumnus: Waseem is personally unaffected. Under the aegis of WWF he will be involved in a need assessment survey after which intervention will take place. Meanwhile, he is helping the Red Cross in identifying places in Upper Swat where relief is urgently needed and is distributing goods there.

Samina, Mohmand Agency, 2008 Alumna: Samina’s ancestral village, called Pir Kala, has been flooded by a branch of the Kabul River. Samina is helping on a personal basis by providing charity such as food, utensils and Medicines. She is attempting to get British Council involved in this area.

Abida, Peshawar, 2010 Alumna: Abida is helping refugees who have flocked to Peshawar by finding out what they require and helping to provide it on a personal, charitable basis, with the help of friends and relatives.

Zahida, Peshawar, 2010 Alumna: Zahida is involved with the World Food Program and is awaiting their instructions on the next step to take.

Tariq, Bagh AJK, 2006 Alumnus: Tariq was involved with the relief efforts in Bagh, helping remove the personal belongings of people living near the river from their houses when the flood warning came. Other than that, he is providing charity on a personal basis. All locals of Bagh are working on a self help basis. He says that his area is not too badly affected and he would like to volunteer in areas that are badly affected.

Muhammad, Mirpur AJK, 2006 Alumnus: Muhammad is involved in setting up a Relief Camp in the School for those affected by the overflow from the Mirpur Dam. There is sufficient charity obtained from locals to meet the needs.

Jamshed, Muzzaffarabad, 2006 Alumna: Jamshed is helping to do a Needs Assessment Survey and is using the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts Chapter for relief activities. She will email further details.

Azmat, Muzzaffarabad, 2007 Alumna: Secretary Girl Guides is providing food & clothes to the affected. The whole Education Department is now involved. A meeting with the Education Director has been set in order to create and deliver a Ramzan Package. Before this, when the flood occured, immediate help was provided to a Christian Community living along the Neelam River. The people were evacuated from there and are now living in Tents or under sheets. Equipment is required. A needs assessment survey has been carried out of affected area Bela Maakari and surveys of Bela Musa and Chelavandi are planned. These will be followed up by distribution of provision.

Shamim, Muzzaffargarh, 2005 Alumna: Provided accommodation for 600 people in a school, with the help of the community. Food provision and bedding is being provided by the community

Rukhsana, Gujarat, 2006 Alumna: Working for flood relief with the Executive District Officer (EDO) and the Education Department. She is a District Education Officer (DEO). She will email all details of her work to ITA.

Mohammad, Multan, 2004 Alumnus: Mohammad is the Deputy Regional Chief, Multan Division. He is working with the Boy Scouts to collect relief material. So far, 200 suits have been collected. 300,000 IDPs are expected to arrive in Multan and they are arranging for accommodations on a priority basis. However, they do not expect to be able to provide for all 300,000 IDPs. Mohammad and ITA are arranging a meeting for further collaboration.

Imtiaz, Lahore, 2008 Alumnus: Imtiaz works for ITA and is doing the M&E for ITA’s efforts. Currently, he is also involved in setting up health and relief camps in Muzzaffargarh. He is emailing these details to us.

Razia, Lahore, 2008 Alumna: Razia works for ITA and is involved in setting up health and relief camps in Muzaffargarh. She is also looking at specifically female related issues, especially health and hygiene and their basic necessities. Razia will also be conducting trauma management sessions.

Huma, Lahore, 2008 Alumna: Huma works for ITA and is involved in raising funds in Lahore for the flood relief activity

Nasreen, Muzzaffargarh, 2005 Alumna: Nasreen is one of the flood victims. She and her family have moved from Muzaffargarh to Multan.

Haroon, Multan, 2004 Alumnus: Haroon Khalid will be assisting ITA’s relief activities in Multan.

Rubeena, Nowshera, 2010 Alumna: Mother’s house is alright. The houses of her three sisters have been destroyed. Relatives and other villagers have moved into her mother and uncle’s house. People from charsadda have also joined them. They will soon shift into schools. There is sufficient Aid now. The food situation is alright. There is a horrible smell, due to the river, not so much in Nowshera but especially in Charsadda.

“Hope you all know that one of PSU 2010 alumna is a resident of the Nowshehra Kalan, of KPK province. though she is living in with her parents in the Peshawar University campus in a rented house, but her native house and village is badly damaged with the recent flood. A large number of her relatives were settled there
from long time, they had lost every thing there houses, furniture, clothes, blankets etc. they shifted to the tents now but living in very bad condition.

a few days ago she met me at nathia and discussed her relatives condition with me. though i tried my level best to provide them good food with the help of some internation relief orgnisations on personal contacts but still wants to do some thing more directly for their support.

so i decide to raise fund for her village for to purchase clothes and gifts for the children of her village for eid. and i started it from home and my friends, community and schools on last saturday. My project site communities are really helping me and the school children are participating very actively in the cause.

I am also requesting to all the PSU Alumni for to join me to raise funds for the clothes and eid gifts for the children’s of the this alumna’s village community.”

with regards,
waseem, PSU 2008 alumnus

The Pakistani Educational Leadership Project’s 160 alumni have been seriously impacted by the floods in Pakistan. Many alumni are also involved in flood relief efforts, as is the project’s Pakistan in-country facilitator, ITA (www.itace.org).

Flood Hazard Distribution Map

For more information, and images, on the floods in Pakistan, visit the following links:

ReliefWeb
OneResponse

Our thoughts and prayers are with our Pakistani friends during this time.

By Jeff Baron
Staff Writer

Washington — The 40 Pakistani educators who descended on a New Hampshire college campus for a month this summer had some unanswered questions: What would they learn? How would it help them transform Pakistan’s schools and society? How would they get along with one another? And what could they possibly eat?

Educators from Pakistan enjoy a puppet program during classes at Plymouth State University, where they learned about innovations in U.S. education.

As the month neared its end, the educators said the program exceeded their expectations. They talked about it on a visit to the State Department in Washington, where the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has sponsored the Pakistani Educational Leadership Institute each summer since 2004 and doubled its size this year.

For one month, the educators lived in dorm rooms at Plymouth State University and learned techniques in classroom management, leadership, education technology and other topics that they can take home to use in their own classrooms and share with colleagues. The group included educators from the primary, middle, secondary, university and technical training levels.

Zakia Ishaq, who trains primary school teachers in Quetta, Baluchistan, said education at all levels in Pakistan tends to follow a traditional model: The teacher lectures and the students listen. She said her own approach has been more student-centered, using activities occasionally to bring lessons to life. “Here, we did everything on the basis of activity — activity-based teaching. Previously it was my method, but I will improve it more,” Ishaq said. “And my attitude: I basically was a friendly teacher with [students]. Now I’ll be more friendly with them, more helpful, as I learned from this group.”

Abida Begum, who teaches at Aga Khan University’s Professional Development Centre North in Gilgit-Baltistan, said she sees the effectiveness of the hands-on approach the institute used in a unit on the water quality of New Hampshire lakes.

“We went there. We selected samples. And by ourselves, we went to the laboratories,” she said. “We have some understanding from books, from Internet, from teachers, and then try to go to fields to really see what is happening. So this is total new learning for me, and I am thinking, when I go back to my own context to give trainings to teachers, I will first introduce the [material], then I will take them to different fields to really see what is happening. So this, I liked it very much.”

Zakia Ishaq, who trains primary school teachers, says she will focus more on "activity-based teaching," which she found effective and enjoyable.

Zakia Ishaq, who trains primary school teachers, says she will focus more on “activity-based teaching,” which she found effective and enjoyable.
Begum said another section of the program, on leadership, showed her how to work a film into a lesson effectively, first introducing a concept and then using the film to reinforce it. She said she plans to do the same to show the teachers she works with how to make the process work for them. “I will try to use theory and practice at the same time,” she said.

Muhammad Nadeem Farooqui, who teaches science and educational leadership at Aga Khan University’s Karimabad campus in Karachi, said that message became meaningful for him, too. “Earlier, I was of the opinion that this course was going to be in the university — ‘in the university’ means confined to some rooms. The new dimension that I could see is that the program was more like a balance of theory and practice. So we went to several places where we were able to implement the theory which we study in the morning, but also a broader application side of the concept.”

Farooqui said he also noticed one of the benefits of an interactive, student-centered approach to learning: He had a lot of fun. “Before coming to this program, I was of the opinion that I bring fun to my classes in Pakistan, but this experience made me realize that my earlier fun was very limited and it was inside the classroom,” he said. “I could realize that the fun should be very much visible and the fun should [involve people in] the program.”

And then there were the educators’ doubts about American food. As Muslims, with Ramadan approaching shortly after their return from the United States, Farooqui said: “We thought that this time we are going to have two months of fasting —one month in America and one month in Pakistan. But it never happened.”

“Initial days were difficult in terms of the food, and then soon we realized that we are here for the cultural exchange program, so why not we develop a taste for the American food? So we did try to eat more American food rather than try to look for some food which we already eat.” At the State Department meetings, Farooqui drew laughs when he pronounced himself a full fan of American cuisine.

Farooqui will play a key role in the program as its students return to Pakistan: He will use his experience in the Aga Khan University alumni association to help coordinate among the program’s alumni, who come from all parts of Pakistan and represent an array of ethnic groups. “It is about connecting the alumni and sharing resources,” he said.

All the alumni are expected to expand the work of the leadership institute by passing on its lessons to students and colleagues and by advocating for a modern, professional education system in Pakistan.

Ishaq said her mission is clear: “I will go. I will train 45 teachers of three schools — 15 [in each]. I will train them on activity-based teaching. When they … go to their school, they will train their colleagues. … Then in this manner, three schools I will cover. Then I will carry on — inshallah.”

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)

Read more: http://www.america.gov/st/sca-english/2010/July/20100729083434kjleinad2.43777e-03.html?CP.rss=true#ixzz0wi1PdqYU

Well Come Peli 2010

Warm Regards

Samia