By Hira Nafees Shah
When Asif Salam went on his Global UGrad exchange experience, he encountered a novel idea for the first time —community service. Organized volunteer opportunities in Salam’s home district of Lakki Marwat in Khyber Pakhtunhkwa, were too far and few between to enable him to truly make a difference.
During his time in the U.S, the alumnus volunteered at a Samaritan Center, an Old People’s Home and also in a cleaning drive launched at the local parks. These activities helped polish his organizational skills and made him realize the importance of giving back to the society.
A Boy Scout Camp Takes Root
When Salam returned to Pakistan, he began his journey to put his new skills to use. After conducting a couple of small projects, he decided to take a major leap forward by running a Boy Scout Camp for local students.
“I decided to do a project on school-going children because I felt that there was not enough focus on informal education in their curriculum,” he said. “Ultimately the goal that I hoped to achieve through my efforts was teaching the participants about community service.”
More than one hundred students from nine schools across the district enthusiastically took part in the camp which was held in late April. To enhance security, the project was set up on the ground of a local school. The students, accompanied by their teachers or scout leaders, learned a variety of essential skills, including setting up tents and building fires. The camp’s classes also raised student awareness of how to be active citizens, the hazards of drug abuse, human rights, environmental issues, first aid, and emergency preparedness.
The ground-breaking Boy Scout camp in Lakki Marwat was funded by the Pakistan-U.S Alumni Network. All alumni of various U.S sponsored exchange programs in Pakistan are eligible to apply for the grant to enable them to give back to their communities.
“An activity on such a large scale was not possible without the Alumni Small Grant in such a backward area as Lakki Marwat,” said Salam.
Students Learn to Help Each Other and Their Communities
The reaction from the student boy scouts was overwhelmingly positive. Tauseeq Ahmed, a tenth grade student, was one of the participants of the session. He says that he attended the camp because he likes philanthropy and wanted to learn how to help people.
“The best moment from the camp was the tree plantation drive,” he said. “I ended up planting some trees at home and also took some plants with me to school, and other students were also happy to see them.”
Ahmed also said he enjoyed learning about the importance of hygiene and how to keep his surroundings clean, so that he applied the technique in his own educational institute.
“A group of volunteers and I created some makeshift garbage cans in order to raise the level of sanitation in our school,” he said.
Dr. Waheed Alam, who works in the emergency ward of the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, conducted the first aid session.
He said he had a good experience answering the questions from the participants; some of which related to finding out how to stop bleeding, how to deal with an emergency, and the proper use of pain-killers.
“I was very happy with the response and felt very good answering some basic questions of the students,” said Alam.
Meanwhile, participants like Javed Iqbal also praised the first aid session. Iqbal found the discussion on setting up emergency shelters to be quite useful as well.
“The information on forming emergency shelters was beneficial, as internally displaced people are now shifting to Lakki Marwat and we have to take care of them,” he said.
The tenth grader said that it was the first time that such a camp was held in the area and thanked the organizers for their efforts.
A teacher who performed the duties of a Scouts leader also seconded Iqbal’s opinion.
“Lakki Marwat is a very backward area so all the sessions were very productive for the participants,” said Shafiullah Shah. “I especially liked the talk on drug abuse, since people start using drugs from a very young age in this area.”
He also said the project helped instill the concept of community service in the teenagers, something which was lacking compared to the students from other parts of Khyber Pakhtunhwa such as Kohat, Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan.
Asif Salam is extremely happy with the response that he has received from the teachers like Shah.
“The teachers told me that they learned a lot due to the packed schedule of the boy scouts camp,” he said. “They also appreciated the ideas that I gave their pupils on how to serve their communities.”
The project is a source of pride for Salam, who has noticed the respect that he enjoys among the students. He is overjoyed at the possibility that they will someday transfer the information that they have gained on to their classmates, leading to a collective change in mindsets in the youngsters of Lakki Marwat.
As for the next step, Salam plans to visit all the schools that participated in the project to ensure that they are properly using the first aid boxes that they received during the camp. He also hopes to apply for another grant to conduct a similar activity in Abbottabad.
But for now, the UGrader is satisfied by what he has achieved as he believes that his initiative introduced a couple of new concepts in Lakki Marwat.
“Our first aid session was unique as the students practically learned how to apply bandages,” he said. “Similarly we had witnessed many houses being destroyed during the earthquake and the information provided in the emergency shelter session, will be advantageous in the case of a future calamity.”
To take a look at more photographs from the Boy Scouts Camp project, visit:
