INSAN FOUNDATION TRUST

Child Development and Youth Leadership Program (CDYLP)

CDYLP is a mature stage of Child Education Program (1992-2000) and Child Labor Advocacy and Training Program (2000-2001). Insan Foundation started it in 2002 to educate the youth about peace, child rights and health and hygiene, using sports and other creative means as vehicle.

It is for the first ever that any organization in Pakistan used sports to disseminate messages on the mentioned issues. Insan names this unique approach "Sports for Change". This component of CDYLP is based on the ability of sports to constructively affect psycho-social patterns of thinking and behaving, especially of those who live in conflict or any other disaster-stricken areas, and to contribute in challenging gender, communal and religious biases which ultimately cause violence and conflict in families and societies at large. Insan implements this program in NWFP and Balochistan.

The need to involve educational institutions is in recognition of the fact that they are natural allies and best positioned to effectively change the attitudes of the youth and communities towards children, working children, peace, and human rights, due to their specific role in society. This helps Insan to "institutionalize" the struggle and thus making efforts sustainable in financial and programmatic sense.

From 2008 onwards, twelve schools have been formally working with Insan under CDYLP (covering about 14,000 students) in Peshawar, eight educational schools in Mansehra (NWFP) and many community groups in Quetta (Balochistan). There are three hundred and fifty volunteers working with Insan. Volunteer-coaches deliver mini-lecture on selected issues and mentor male and female students' sports activities along with conducting other activities within schools. The main component of the program "Sports for Change" has recently been redesigned and is now known as Act for Change.

Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Program (GEWEP)

GEWEP is an awareness, capacity development and technical support program to demonstrate social, political and economic viability of gender equality and women's empowerment.

In line with the core objective of GEWEP, Insan Foundation Trust is in the final stages of launching a project "Women in Peace Action (WPA)". This project aims to enhace institutional capacities of civil society and government, in at least 15 districts of NWFP, Balochistan and Punjab, to develope conducive environment for the effective implementation of the United Nation's Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security, namely 1325, 1820, 1880 and 1889.

Under GEWEP, Insan is also presently extending technical support to Gender Reform Action Plan (Punjab) to mainstream gender in government line departments. Another important intervetion under the same programm is an assessment study and awareness and advocacy project on reproductive health of mothers and would-be mothers in post conflict areas in NWFP. It will soon be implemented by three-member consortium headed by Insan Foundation. Besides this, Insan is also providing technical input to the Gender in Education Working Group, Punjab Chapter, which is formed under "Gender in Education Policy Support Project" of DFID, UNICEF and Government of the Punjab.

GEWEP came upfront in 2008 following a comprehensive organizational and program review. Before women's leadership became more pronounced in Insan Foundation, women's rights education remained at a low profile, mostly as punctuations, in the debate of rights and peace related activities. It is important to note however that in 2007, Insan had developed a card game, i.e., Idraak or Consciousness, for giving orientation to common citizens and rights activists about women's rights and women's rights violations vis-a-vis CEDAW. That card game was the naïve beginning of Insan's struggle for women's rights.