STEP – Science, Technology, and Education in Pakistan

About a year back we started a project called the LUMUN Social Responsibility Program (SRP) at LUMS under the LUMUN, a Model UN society at LUMS, banner. The aim was to contribute in achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals of providing universal primary education and environmental sustainability. The vision of the program was simple: spread awareness among the youth, give back to society, and bring about change.Traditionally, NGOs have relied on volunteers and donors from the civil society for a significant portion of their activities. SRP started off as a bridge between NGOs and prospective volunteers. At LUMUN’s annual flagship event, the All Pakistan LUMS Model UN Conference (LUMUN ’08), we showcased work done by various NGOs like CARE Foundation, KASHF Foundation and The Citizen Foundation (TCF) to help them attract volunteers and donors. Delegates from all over Pakistan and abroad attending the conference signed up for working with these NGOs in different capacities. We can proudly claim that many of the commitments did materialize and both parties appreciated our role.

This year, we decided to take a more active role in the process and felt that we could use the LUMUN banner to attract volunteers to participate directly in SRP-run activities. We studied programs run by various NGOs and identified areas in which SRP could aid those programs or extend them while staying within the scope of a Model UN society. Two such NGOs were identified: CARE Foundation and SAVE.

CARE Foundation is a charitable trust well known for its contribution to education in Pakistan. They run an English language development program called ACCESS, which provides free English classes to students of government schools. Upon visiting these centers, we realized that while there was focus on teaching English as a language, there was significant lack of emphasis on teaching English as a tool for discourse across disciplines.  SRP decided to bridge this divide. We set up teams of volunteers who visited these centers once a week and interacted with the students. Volunteer-to-student ratio was strictly maintained at 1:6 to ensure individual attention. We handed out reading material about current world issues and taught them how to critically analyze an article. Moreover, we trained them in the art of public speaking and taught them how to debate issues with their peers.

SRP also helped organize a Public Speaking Competition for the students at Al-Hamra in August where the students spoke on topics like: “My responsibilities as a citizen of Pakistan”, “What is a bigger threat: Internal or External Forces?” and “Is media bringing a revolution?”. The judges included renowned names from the debating circle Mr Taimoor Banday and Mr Omair Rana, who greatly appreciated the effort of our volunteers in training the students for the event. The students recently attended the Aitchison College Model UN Conference as observers to learn the workings of a MUN conference. The next planned activity for these students is participation as delegates in the All Pakistan LUMS Model UN Conference (LUMUN ’09), our flagship conference, to be held at the end of December this year.

Hira Bilal, a student from LGS Defence, who has been actively involved in training children at the ACCESS center in Rehmanpura, shared her experience of working with LUMUN SRP. “I think that belonging to the more privileged class in society, it is our responsibility to help those less privileged than us and what SRP has started is a one of a kind program. Through it, we have discovered such great talent that would otherwise have gone to waste. On a personal level, meeting these children every week has made me realize that there’s more to life than just catering for your own needs and desires. All of us volunteers have developed a special bond with the students at CARE and we try our best to make them feel as much a part of the society as we are”.

SAVE (Society for the Advancement of Education) is an NGO started by a LUMS alumnus that operates a school called Free Mashal Primary School. SRP collaborated with the school administration and teachers to devise short- and long-term plans for setting up a sustainable teaching and monitoring system at this under-resourced school. Our volunteers visited the school thrice a week, monitoring classes and assisting the teachers in preparing unseen tests. They strived to break the convention of rote learning that plagues educational institutions throughout Pakistan. Over the weeks, there was a marked improvement in the performance of children who really enjoyed the presence of our young volunteers. We also held an informal teacher training workshop where the teachers were introduced to modes of teaching employed in mainstream private schools. More such workshops are in the pipeline.

Apart from helping in the classroom, our volunteers also engaged the children in other extra-curricular activities like nursery rhymes, skits and cultural dance performances. The children and the teachers had never been exposed to such activities and both learned that learning and enjoyment can go hand-in-hand and, at times, such activities bring out hidden talents in children and manage to tame the rowdiest of kids.

The Principal at Mashal, Mrs. Sumra Mansur, had this to say about the work of SRP: “We need people like you and programs like these. The wonderful ideas you propose help our program work in a real progressive way, and I believe that with the involvement of such dedicated and wonderful internees our mission will continue in a much more pleasant and successful manner”.

We aim to continue providing assistance to SAVE in terms of holding workshops on a regular basis and helping prepare regular tests and exams for the children. We are also working on ways to improve the infrastructure of the school and a Computer Lab and a Library are in the pipeline.

LUMUN Social Responsibility Program has seen incredible growth over the last 6 months and much of the credit for this success goes to the Minahil Zafar, Shahzad Ahmed, Quanita Naveed and their team of over 70 volunteers. Through their hard work and dedication, they have managed to achieve what nobody expected from the rich kids living in posh areas and driving air-conditioned cars. And with the widespread use of technology, coordinating activities is no longer the biggest hurdle. We actively used Facebook and chOpaal.pk to manage our trips, meetings and notifications.

We’re now working to expand LUMUN SRP by affiliating with more NGOs and coming up with small projects that student volunteers can take up as and when they’re free. We are also looking for more volunteers and bright ideas. Hopefully, we’ll soon setup programs in cities other than Lahore as well. And, most importantly, we’re hopeful that other people and especially students will follow suit and will setup similar programs and ride the wave.

When we started out, we didn’t have a plan. All we had was a vision. Now that we’ve been there and done that — trust us, a vision is all you need.

Editor’s Note: Asim Fayaz is a senior at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) majoring in Computer Science. He is the co-founder and COO of chOpaal.pk, a text messaging-based social networking service, and the General Secretary of LUMS Model UN Society (LUMUN). Recently, he served as the curator of TEDxLahore, the first-ever TEDx event held in Pakistan.

LUMS has been shut down for a week. And as I said to a friend, maybe it’s a good thing. Because we, the ones at LUMS, are so disconnected from Pakistan, that it had to take the death of seven students, seven of our people, to make us pause our movies and type google news instead of facebook in our urls. Because with the divide between classes here, it’s as if Pakistan is two countries; one where all the news comes from, bombs, stampedes at ration lines, acid attacks, rapes and one where LUMS is, where people (even a few crazy women) can walk the clean quiet streets of defence and cantt, where people dine in every increasing style, where the only effects of terrorism are a few tiresome roadblocks and the echos of blasts far far away. Terrorism has reached our country now and we are slightly disturbed at it.

So finally the budding intellectuals of Pakistan have turned their attention to this problem that they had heard about but never really experienced before this. But this turned out to be a problematic exercise for me. Ask me what I want to see in this country. And I can flood your ears with concepts such as pluralism, freedom, justice, democracy, even anarchism in the style of Noam Chomsky. But ask me, “how do you get to there, from here?” And I am mute. And my hands drop uselessly to my sides. Or rather, they go up and cover my eyes because there is no point of sight when you can’t move.

My philosophy won’t work here because I know what I want but I have no way to make it happen.

I want these killings to end. I want the discourse to become more nuanced than “Islamic terrorism”. I want people to realize that all Muslims aren’t killers and that to say so, even as a joke, is to open the door to a dangerous generalization. I want Muslims to be able to criticize Israel on it’s war crimes without being attacked as fundamentalists. I want Muslims to stop defending what’s happening in our country and stop using conspiracy theories to deflect blame onto the US and its cronies. I want things to become less simplistic. But it can’t happen. Because there are certain interests for USA in creating the image of a Muslim terrorist. Because there is a certain complacency in the Muslim attribution of blame to the west. We all want to blame someone because then the responsibility to fix the problem is placed on whoever is blamed. And man is inherently lazy.

I want the people of Pakistan to be united. But for so many groups with so many nationalist claims to unite under one banner or one leader or even one party is impossible.

I want Pakistan to be partitioned into it’s four provinces. But for that to take place without bloodshed is a myth unheard of in our part of the World. And then there is the problem of our geographical location. A problem that we refer to with a mixture of pride and sorrow. The problem is that we are essential to too many interests. We are a troublesome neighbor to far too many important countries for those interests to allow us to divide for internal peace. Better a war ridden Pakistan than four small states who don’t border all those territories that actually matter to the World.

I want us to not think in terms of nationalism and patriotism. Because what use are these constructs? Why is a fellow Pakistani worth anymore than someone who just happens to be born in Iran or India? Why can’t we cherish human life and human development regardless of which boundary it occurs in? We cannot because such trajectories of thinking have never been offered to us. We cannot because if every Pakistani began to think of him or herself as an individual and began to work for their own benefit, all Pakistan would get is a slap from the invisible hand. Individualism abroad means greater progress because there are structures in which that individualism is exercised. Here, individualism is destruction. It is individualism that makes so many LUMS students rejoice that our university has closed in the middle of exams, because they hadn’t studied and would have scored “below the mean” in a course. Yes, there are Pakistanis who are rejoicing in this moment.

I want such Pakistanis, all Pakistanis to realize what it means to be at war. I want us to work. Ceaselessly. Because work alone can produce results and yes, it might be a Western concept to cherish work oh-so-much instead of sipping tea with the family but I want us to realize that tea and drawing room chats won’t do anything for us. But we can’t. Because when we go to school we die; when we talk out loud, we disappear; when we write, they write back threats. And why should we work? Why should we bother, sitting in our generator powered homes, surfing the net on our shiny laptops, going to cafes and stealing kisses on campus? Of course the greatest issue for LUMS to consider is kissing on campus. Of course. Because what effect does Pakistan’s appalling Gender Equity Index ratings have on a campus where women make up nearly half the student body? What effect do rising food prices have for us, with our regulated cafeteria prices?

So maybe it is good that LUMS has shut down for a week. But will this week change anything, I wonder? An essay here, a comment there. And this week will pass. And the rat race within LUMS will begin again. And you and I, as rational actors, will realize that nothing we do can help Pakistan and we should simply help ourselves by burying our heads in our imported traditions, getting the grades and rushing abroad the first chance we get.

I want things to change. But they won’t. Because we are stuck, you and I and scores like us. And I don’t know how we can get unstuck.

On Funding Projects from the Industry

STEP: Till now, mostly you were funding projects in the academia. Would you be looking at funding projects that are directly initiated by the industry?

QS: We are supposed to fund projects submitted by the industry. Our proposal can be initiated by even an individual. But, being an entity that funds public money, the longevity of the institution to which we are giving money is very important to us. An individual can take the money (from us), work for a little while, and then disappear. What do we do then? Universities don’t disappear. They can provide longevity and credibility to the project. And, it is not (just) longevity for the length of that project but even after that. Read the rest of this entry »

Faheem was one of the first people I befriended in early 1971 on my return from my graduate studies in the States, a friendship that survived till he breathed his last. The reasons go much beyond our common interest in physics and physics education and even our common associations with the Physics Department of Quaid-e-Azam University and the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, places where we frequently met. Perhaps the main reason was that we both were greatly influenced by the Black and the anti-Vietnam movements in the States and the broader anti-establishment student movement of the sixties.

Read the rest of this entry »

STEP Lecture Series is an initiative to bring interactive talks by distinguished researchers, academics, and entrepreneurs to universities in Pakistan via video conferencing. The series aims to help bridge the ‘knowledge divide’ by introducing students in Pakistan to the emerging trends and cutting edge research, and in the process, inspiring these students to take on challenging problems. The talks will also be recorded and made available on STEP website for later viewing.

The first talk in this series titled, New Approaches to Modeling and Control of Complex Dynamics, will be given by Dr. Adrien Treuille of Carnegie Mellon University on October 15, 2009 at 7:30 PM Pakistan Standard Time (9:30 AM EDT). The talk will be streamed live to LUMS Department of Computer Science, Mil College of Signals (MCS), and Air University.  Below is the abstract of the talk and a short biography of Dr. Treuille.

Title: New Approaches to Modeling and Control of Complex Dynamics
When: October 15, 2009 at 7:30 PM Pakistan Standard Time.
Where: LUMS Department of Computer Science, Mil College of Signals, and Air University
Abstract: Complex phenomena such as animal morphology, human motion, and large fluid systems challenge even our most sophisticated simulation and control techniques. Read the rest of this entry »

It was mid-October 1973 when, after a grueling 26-hour train ride from Karachi, I reached the physics department of Islamabad University (or Quaid-e-Azam University, as it is now known). As I dumped my luggage and “hold-all” in front of the chairman’s office, a tall, handsome man with twinkling eyes looked at me curiously. He was wearing a bright orange Che Guevara t-shirt and shocking green pants. His long beard, though shorter than mine, was just as unruly and unkempt. We struck up a conversation. At 23, I had just graduated from MIT and was to be a lecturer in the department; he had already been teaching as associate professor for five years. The conversation turned out to be the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Together with Abdul Hameed Nayyar – also bearded at the time – we became known as the Sufis of Physics. Thirty six years later, when Faheem Hussain lost his battle against prostate cancer, our sadness was beyond measure. Read the rest of this entry »