Moalims

LAHORE - Like other parts of the globe, World Wildlife Day will be observed across the country including Lahore tomorrow (March 3) for raising awareness about importance of wild fauna and flora.
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) decided to proclaim March 3, the day of the adoption of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), as World Wildlife Day.
WWD theme this year is "The future of wildlife is in our hands", with a sub-theme "The future of elephants is in our hands".
Lahore Safari Zoo Park will arrange a seminar to mark the day. Minister for Forests, Wildlife and Fisheries Malik Muhammad Asif Bha Awan will be the chief guest. Wildlife experts, professors of Punjab University and University of Animal Sciences and students will attend the event. The seminar will be followed by a walk.
PEF targets 2.3m enrollment by end of 2016: As a result of continued annual expansions in the free educational initiatives of the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF), the total number of beneficiary students would rise to as much as 2.3 million by the end of this year.
PEF MD Tariq Mahmood said this while briefing the program committee members about expansion plans in partnership with the private school partners at his office yesterday.
The meeting which held with convener Dr Amjad Saqib in the chair, reviewed different agenda-items including programs’ expansion & their budget estimations for the next financial year and effective exploitation of public private partnership based initiatives.
The MD gave a detailed presentation about foundation’s role and its contribution in providing free schooling facility to the deserving children at their doorsteps. He said that PEF is working hard to achieve different educational targets, adding that more than hundred monitoring and evaluation assistants have been hired to maintain effective monitoring mechanism of partner schools in districts. He told that inclusive education has been introduced for the needy differently-abled children in seven selected districts including Lahore. These students are studying side by side of the able students. The meeting was informed that capacity building of six thousand teachers has been planned through directorate of staff development.
For this purpose, 145 trainings would be held in six different districts. The meeting observed that the process of teachers’ certification would help to improve the overall quality of education by introducing them new concepts in their subjects. It also noted with satisfaction the 45 percent ratio of girls in PEF sponsored schools and observed that this proportion may be further increased to 50 percent so that gender- equality could be fully maintained. Program directors briefed the meeting about their respective program’s performance.
Dr Amjad Saqib asked the program heads to work proactively and ensure that their school partners’ grievances are well taken care of so that the agenda of education-promotion could be achieved.

Published in The Nation newspaper on 02-Mar-2016