'Young Minds Anti-Corruption Awareness Workshop'
IBA – City Campus, Karachi
24th December, 2011

Transparency International Pakistan, for the first time hosted an activity based workshop, catering to the high school level students. 65 students from 7 different schools participated, while a few private students were also a part of the event.

The event commenced with the recitation of the Holy Quran, while Dr. N. I. Khowaja, Director  Projects, introduced TI-P, he said that the students today are tomorrow’s leaders thus they have to be the ones to bring about the change. He also quoted Quaid-e-Azam’s first speech in the constituent assembly to emphasis on the menace’s existence.
The inaugural session continued with a short presentation on the problems youth are facing today, some solutions and what is to be expected from the workshop, presented by Sabeela Siddiki, Assistant Project Coordinator at TI-P. She concluded by saying that we should not expect somebody to come and wave a magic wand to vanish our problems, we are the ones who need to be the ‘change-agents’
The first session was conducted by Ms. Eram Abbasi, a renowned trainer and educationist. She focused on the importance of Social Media in today’s era and how it can be used as a tool to fight corruption.
She started her session with a brief introduction to what corruption is and why it happens. She then moved on to what can be done about it; she emphasized on creating a polite and sophisticated movement rather than having rough protests. According to her an empowered citizen plays a vital role in the fight and quoted Peter Eigen that the best way to root out corruption is to make it known, while she also showed his recorded message (video). She made her session very interactive where students got the opportunity to share their experiences and how they overcame it. Her activity involved students to be divided in groups to make a social media strategy that focuses on fighting against corruption. The results were to be judged and announced at day-end.

 

Mr. Syed Nusrat Ali, was the guest speaker for the next session. He too, kept his presentation very interactive, simple and full of real-life examples. He discussed various reasons why people today are forced to give and take bribe, after creating a gloomy scenario; he then spoke about the uniqueness and positive aspects of Pakistan. He also put forward the ‘ZBP’ – Zero Blame Policy, where he mustered the students to gather the courage to take responsibility and focus on things they have control over to bring reform the society.

After lunch, a theatre performance was arranged through Firefly Theatre Network. A game show format was prepared with 3 contestants fighting to be ‘Pakistan’s Next Top Corruptor’; the students thoroughly enjoyed the performance. Lessons were embedded throughout the show while the moral of it all came down the common-man that they are the ones who elect and select their leaders thus are to be blamed for the problems that are increasing day-by-day.

The next trainer, Mr. Mujtaba Makhdoom, Chief Coloring Officer at SPLASH Inc. along with Mr. Ahmed Talal, his co-facilitator conducted a session on IQRA, he focused on learning and observing. He quoted different anecdotes from lives of different people; Messi, Less Brown, himself etc and how they brought about a change at different levels. He then proceeded towards his activity called ‘Battlefield’ where groups were to make a practical strategy to bring about change and fight against corruption, presentations were made and gifts were handed out for the best strategies.

The workshop concluded with the last guest speaker session conducted by Mr. Navaid M. Khan, a renowned trainer. His session ‘Corruption All Around Us’ tapped all the day’s topics and gathered the gist of the workshop in his presentation. He started with asking the students to define corruption, after getting 15 different responses, he reasoned for all of them.  He spoke of nepotism and lost values, but amongst all these, he told students how to stay positive and play their roles in wiping corruption.

The workshop concluded with the announcement of results for the first activity, while certificates were handed to all participants and volunteers. All trainers and guest speakers were presented with plaques as a token of appreciation on behalf of TI-P.