Data tabulation: ‘Province lacks groups focused on youth’

First volume of the first ever Youth Directory was released last month.

LAHORE:

“There is a dearth of youth-focused and youth-led organisations in many districts in the province. As many as 14 districts in the Punjab have no youth organisations at all,” said Bargad Programme Officer Shahbaz Israr Khan.

Dr Khan has a degree in Gender and Peace Building from the UN  University for Peace where currently he serves as visiting faculty. He led a team to develop the first ever Youth Directory, which aims to collate data on all youth organisations and informal groups in the country. The first volume was released last month by Bargad, an NGO working for the development of the youth.

The project funded by a German NGO, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, aims to cover the country in five phases.

The first volume is focused on youth groups in the Punjab and Islamabad. The data collection by over 30 volunteers took nearly a year.



Dr Khan said there was a dearth of information on youth organisations in the country. No database, he said, had comprehensive information on these organisations and places with youth programmes. “The lack of primary data creates a big dilemma,” he said.

There is greater focus on such groups in large cities while smaller cities and rural areas get ignored, he said.

The directory, he said, not only defined youth groups and organisations but also discussed whether they were youth-based or worked with the youth as a component of the organisation’s goals. “The report offers insight into whether these organisations are youth-led, or youth serving,” he said. Most volunteers in the organisations were from educational institutes, he observed.

The directory identifies as many as 434 youth organisations, out of which 372 are in the Punjab and 62 in Islamabad. Of the youth organisations in the Punjab, the youth are focused as a component by 259 organisations. There are only 113 organisations that solely focused on the youth.

“There is a misconception that youth organisations are mushrooming in the country,” he said, “The research has indicated several areas where there is complete absence of youth focused informal or formal groups.”

In its analysis of youth representation in these organisations, the research revealed that the youth comprised more than 50 per cent of the lower rungs of the staff. However, there was less than 31 per cent representation of young people in the board of directors. Women volunteers were also less than 41 per cent of the work force.

In terms of areas these organisations focused on, the research revealed that 302 out of 372 organisations focused on education programmes. Only 32 organisations focused on micro-credit programmes and 57 conducted youth based research studies.

The directory lists as many as 64 informal youth groups, of which 63 are in the Punjab. These groups are self reliant and are run by volunteers. Dr Khan said such groups were important as they engaged the youth in cultural and localised activities. These activities range from creative writing in local languages, sports, dramatics, music and awareness programmes. However, he said, these groups had limited capacity as most lacked formal set up and resources.

Recently, Dr Khan’s team has been conducting research for the directory in 25 districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. “Field work in KP will end towards the end of this year, after which the team will head for Gilgit-Baltistan,” said Dr Khan. Directories for Balochistan, Sindh and Azad Jammu and Kashmir would be prepared later, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 6^th, 2013.