By Hina Kiyani
ISLAMABAD: British Council (BC) to further empower women and girls by bringing the English and Digital for Girls’ Education (EDGE) programme to Pakistan which will benefit about 1,700 young women and girls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan.
The EDGE has a proven track record of empowerment through English with existing programmes in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Enabled thanks to UNICEF, the British Council’s EDGE programme is now positioned to engage women and girls across four districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Quetta district in the Baluchistan province.
This exciting new phase for EDGE will enable adolescent girls and young women, within both the host populations and Afghan refugees, to develop English proficiency, digital skills, and a greater awareness of social issues.
The British Council has been operating EDGE since 2016, with over 18,000 participants and a further 1,400 peer leaders trained to facilitate 550 clubs.
As many 17,000 parents have attended community fairs and over 330 hours of materials has been developed, providing access to English and digital skills. EDGE also operates community engagement events designed to help elevate the status of women and girls.
Country Director of the British Council Pakistan, Amir Ramzan said, “Promoting gender equality through educating and empowering women is a vital part of our work. The EDGE programme has demonstrated remarkable success and we are looking forward to continuing this work by empowering a further 1,700 girls in KPK and Baluchistan.”
Director of English Programmes British Council, Michael Connolly said, “Thanks to UNICEF we are now able to bring the EDGE programme to some of the most remote and marginalised communities of women and girls in Pakistan. EDGE uses a combination of peer-led and skills-focused approaches, which has proven extremely empowering for girls in this age group [13-19].
EDGE provides safe spaces at community level where girls can discuss, understand and work to address complex issues; including child exploitation and child marriage.”
