It is proposed to prepare a Handbook, serving as a Knowledge Product, that documents the architecture of governance in Pakistan and educate the citizens, with a particular focus on urban youth, on informed civic activism. The Handbook will have two component sections – one dealing with national governance, and the other on theory, practice and models of civic activism.
Component 1 – How my country runs? The Governance Framework.
= This section would in a reader friendly manner, detail out the key pillars of the governance framework of Pakistan – legislations and institutions – sourcing from the Constitution of Pakistan, providing relevant information on key legislative and institutional architecture as it relates to the Legislature, Executive and the Judiciary – spread across the three tiers of governance – the Federal, provincial and the local. There will be a critical focus on the role of the citizenry in terms of entitlements, rights and responsibilities and an understanding of avenues for applying effective forms of citizen activism for influencing decision making processes. In this context, needs to be highlighted the electoral process and associated legislations and institutions.
Component 2 – Civic Activism – Becoming an empowered citizen.
= This section aims to capacitate citizens, particularly the urban youth, for active citizen engagement for understanding community based problems in an inclusive manner and engaging with formal and informal stakeholders for designing solutions. This information would come through bringing out an understanding of the term ‘civic activism’, and then highlighting the practice of civic activism in various typologies of citizen engagement within the ambit of public policy and institutions of governance. Models and best practices would document applied models on civic activism – learning how to engage with communities and formal actors – example, elected representatives and service providers.
The Handbook should be structured in a way that the content can be easily used for facilitating interactive tasks oriented learning class room discussions that deal with educating students about the social contract, three-tiered governance construct in Pakistan, role of legislative, executive, judiciary and the electoral system and modes of civic activism.
