Introduction

Working towards UNDP’s Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) to mobilize youth, especially young women in universities, to become cause champions and community leaders on social cohesion and community resilience.
A project named ‘’Da Khwaido Ghag’’ was developed. It is a Pashto term means the Voice of Women. This intervention aimed to identify, capacitate, and mentor young on campus women as youth leaders on community resilience and social cohesion. Memorandum of Understanding were signed with University of Malakand and Swat for smooth execution.
Implementation started with baseline research in both universities to understand the student knowledge, perception & behavior on Peace building & Social Cohesion and Mental Health. The baseline research findings aid the program team in designing the training program for the young women in university of Malakand and Swat keeping the focus on achieving the following objectives mentioned below. Also, to build the capacity of pool of journalists from Malakand and Swat to publish the success stories of participants.

OBJECTIVES OF COLLABORATION

  1. Provide programmatic and technical advisory support to promising young candidates for on-campus activities.
  2. Undertake high-level inclusive consultation between university administration, provincial/national stakeholders, student body representatives and students to institutionalize project activities, Mobilize and capacitate young women to form peer support groups for the provision of mental health support to vulnerable females.
  3. Promote and catalyse discourse on women’s role on peace building, development, and social cohesion through publication of articles in mainstream print and digital media in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

DELIVERABLES

PEACE BUILDING AND SOCIAL COHESION
100 women activists from both universities were selected for a 4- days capacity building training of Women Youth Leaders on Community resilience and social cohesion. After the training the participants were divided into groups to roll out social action projects in their communities to combat the violent extremism. To support the projects activities, PKR 25,000 were given to each group as a seed money.

MENTAL HEALTH & WELL BEING
40 women altogether from both universities were selected to understand the intricacies of providing mental health support to vulnerable groups. The methodology was to review and debrief on mock sessions and role plays to understand the complexity of human emotion. The trained group of 40 women form peer support groups and will reach out to women seeking support. Evaluation of these sessions has been seen as an integral part of counseling. This helped us in developing new ways to gather evidence attesting to client change that document the processes in which counselors and clients engage and the outcomes associated with those processes.

JOURNALIST’S TRAINING
20 journalists from Swat and Malakand were trained to showcase positive stories shared by young girls from Swat and Malakand with an aim to enhanced effectiveness of P/CVE interventions by increasing women participation and increasing alignment with current international knowledge and best practice on the subject.

NAME OF CLIENT
UNDP

GEOGRAPHICAL SPREAD
Swat & Malakand