A conference was organized on Wednesday with titled ‘The urgency for climate change education – Engaging youth leaders for indigenous and sustainable climate action” at the NED University in Karachi.

The conference was attended by more than 200 participants including students, faculty and climate change experts from both public and private sectors. Ahmad Shabbar, Founder and CEO GarbageCAN, was the keynote speaker and the panelists included esteemed speakers like Dr Samina Kidwai, former Senior Research Scientist and Director General, National Institute of Oceanography, Pakistan, and Honorary Professor, East China Normal University Shanghai, PR China, Ms Rumana Husain, artist, activist and educationist, Ms Razina Bilgrami, Development Professional – Former United Nations Official, Mr. Shahrukh Nadeem, CEO MyWater and CEO MyHCM, and Yasir Husain, Director, Climate Action Centre.

The interactive panel discussion was around the main Conference theme highlighting the role and significance of youth led local action to address climate issues. The plenary was followed by social action workshops where students worked on developing social action projects for mitigation and adaptation in their local contexts.

Teachers’ Resource Centre (TRC) is Pakistan’s pioneering teacher education institution working for the last 37 years to uplift the standards of education through professional development of teachers and education stakeholders. TRC has trained more than 60,000 teachers and education stakeholders across Pakistan. We are proud of our legacy of bringing early childhood education into the mainstream public policy discourse in the country.

TRC developed Pakistan’s first-ever National Curriculum on Early Childhood Education (2002) and since then has been offering internationally and nationally accredited teachers’ professional development qualifications in ECE.

In addition to capacity building and training of teachers and education leaders/managers, TRC designs and conducts quality audits, undertakes research and advocacy, develops and disseminates low cost contextually relevant learning resources especially for marginalized and emergency contexts and pilots education innovations for addressing the learning gaps.

TRC works with both public and private education institutions in Pakistan models across diverse geographical regions.

In line with its legacy of designing innovative education models addressing critical themes, TRC has developed and begun implementation of a climate change education initiative called CANDLE (Climate Change Awareness and Action for Nature, Diversity, Livelihoods and Ecosystems) with support from US Consulate.

The overarching goal is to create a homegrown program to educate people regarding our local climate issues and pave way to inspire individual and collective action indigenously through wider and deeper stakeholder engagement and policy advocacy. As part of this initiative, TRC is working to launch Pakistan’s Introductory Curriculum on Climate Change Education (for grades 1 to 10) and engage with youth via universities to motivate them for social action leading to sustainable climate change in their regions.