Promoting education: Poverty Alleviation Fund signs agreement with government

Ideas on social mobilisation, gender mainstreaming to be discussed.

LAHORE: Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) on Wednesday signed an agreement with the Women Development Department (WDD), and Literacy and Non-Formal Basic Education Department (NFBE) government of the Punjab to promote gender mainstreaming in its projects to empower women to play a better role in the socio-economic development of the country.

PPAF CEO Qazi Azmat Isa, WDD Secretary Irum Bukhari, and NFBE Secretary Pervez Ahmed Khan signed the agreement.

According to the agreement, the PPAF would collaborate in piloting policy-grassroots linkages through supporting networks of women and youth organisations to interact closely with the WDD, NFBE and other public departments.

Ideas on social mobilisation strategies, gender mainstreaming strategies, development of networks and information and awareness raising campaigns to implement provincial laws and policies would also be shared.

The PPAF agreed to engage young volunteers and community institution members from selected districts in the Punjab to contact women and youth at grassroots. Improving literacy rates would also be an objective.

Under the agreement, literacy modules would be provided by the NFBE to cater to the needs of women groups, raising awareness on gender-based violence and limitations and challenges women faced in public and private domains.

Women Development Department (WDD) would promote, coordinate and monitor execution of the Women Empowerment Package for safeguarding rights of women and expanding economic opportunities for them. NFBE was tasked to formulate policies and projects for access to quality education.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 17^th, 2014.