Community Engagement

Community engagement is a collaborative process where diverse stakeholders unite to foster mutual understanding, create shared values, and work towards inclusive progress. By empowering individuals, addressing local concerns, and nurturing connections, community engagement strengthens societal bonds, promotes social responsibility, and cultivates a vibrant environment where every member can thrive and contribute to collective success.

We work with local stakeholders, including public organizations and their officials, political and religious parties and their representatives, civil society organizations and activists, and youth leaders. Working under our Community Engagement program, we bring them together to foster mutual understanding and inclusively work toward Pakistan's democratic, economic and social progressive. We constantly communicate that engaging with each other is the only way toward development and prosperity.

Mapping Social Movements

Tahareek is an Urdu word that means "movements."

FES supported the project (2022), in which CSED mapped the social movements in the Sindh and Punjab provinces. During the tenure, the project team extensively traveled through both regions, met with the leaders and workers of the social movements, and documented their struggles and organizational evolutions.

The project also collaborated with prominent political and civil society leaders for advocacy and corroborating the gathered information. Tahareek also worked with political analysts for the social, local, and province-wide analysis of the impacts of these social movements. The project published a detailed document about the social movements.

 Aahung

Aahung is an Urdu word that means "diversity creating a singularity."

The United States Embassy's Community Engagement Office funded the project to build social and professional bridges between the University and Madrasa students and teachers in 12 districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. It involved holding training sessions for male and female students on identifying fallacies of extremism and violence on social media and their communities and choosing to reject such narratives.

The project brought together academicians from the universities and Madrasas to help them understand each other's worldviews and forge local partnerships build stronger sense of engaging with each other for social cohesion. Aahung was a two-year project ending in 2019.

Aahung (Pilot)

After the success of Make Peace Possible with the Norwegian Church Aid (mentioned below), the donor agreed to support the idea of working with the university and Madrasa students and teachers to connect and work together to build peace on and off campuses. Another fundamental part of the tested approach was to involve the local civil society leaders (media, lawyers, traders, and women's associations) and administrative officials.

The project partnered with the University of Swat and the University of Malakand, and two Madrasas at each location. It invited their academicians to Islamabad for capacity enhancement training sessions, exposure, and introductions to the concepts of building social cohesion. The project ended in mid-2017 and paved the way for the above-mentioned "larger Aahung."

 Make Peace Possible

The Norwegian Church Aid, Pakistan Country Office funded the Make Peace Possible. The project partnered with the Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan and Mardan Press Club to build credible local alliances against all forms of extremist and violent narratives.

Working with the local community and social leaders, Make Peace Possible also brought the local Sikh and Christian community members and their leaders as credible stakeholders, and partners to build and maintain local peace. Make Peace Possible was a short-term project of six months and tested new social approaches to connecting communities with different religious and social backgrounds to prevent and counter violent extremism.

The project ended in 2016.