Name of organization:
Aware Girls
Description of organization:
Aware Girls is a youth- and women-led organization working towards building peace and gender equality in the Northwest of Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. The mission of the organization is to strengthen the leadership skills of young women enabling them to act as agents of change, peace and equality in their communities. Their belief is that national development occurs by advocating for social, economic, legal and policy transformations.
Context:
Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) face continual incidents of militancy and extremism due to factors including a lack of economic, political, and human development opportunities. Propaganda has fostered insecurity around the Islamic identity. Extremist groups focus on this dissatisfaction in young people, and work on recruiting them to join initiatives targeting religious minorities. Aware Girls instead recognizes the role young people have played in promoting peace and pluralism, and seeks to institutionalize the potential of youth as peacebuilders by the establishing a Youth Peace Policy in Pakistan.
Proposed project and expected results:
“Promoting Youth Peace Leadership for UNSC Resolution 2250” aims to promote the culture of inter-faith harmony, pluralism, peace and tolerance in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan through educational activities for young people focusing on interfaith dialogue and peace leadership. The project also seeks to make peacebuilding processes more inclusive of youth in that province and to create more policy level support for youth-led peacebuilding initiatives, thus working on localizing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250. By the end of the project, Aware Girls expects to:
- Organize a 3-day “Youth Leadership Peace and Inter-Faith Harmony Camp” for 30 young peace activists from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
- Develop plans by 30 trained young people for initiatives promoting culture of inter-faith harmony, pluralism, and peace reaching out to diverse communities (2,000 people).
- Undertake peer-to-peer education activities, interfaith exchanges and study circles to prevent young people from joining violent extremist groups.
- Organize 5 consultations with young people affected by conflict and terrorism.
- Produce a charter of demand to influence policy development and the adoption of a Provincial Youth Peace Policy under the principles of UNSC Resolution 2250.
Project coordinator: Gulalai Ismail
Contact information: aware_girls@yahoo.com
Website: www.awaregirls.org