Islamabad
Cartoonist, Nigar Nazar, was invited by the National Police Bureau Islamabad here on Wednesday to give a presentation of her work to officials of the Bureau, officers and staff of the National Public Safety Commission, NAFTA and National Counter Terrorism Authority.
The programme was hosted by Police Officer Dr Syed Kaleem Imam (PSP).
Nigar Nazar then spoke about her skill of art and cartooning and how she presses these into service for spreading awareness of social causes. The central character of her cartoons, GOGI is a young , bright and educated girl representing the fair sex comprising over half the population of the country. Nigar’s Gogi cartoons not only entertain and bring smiles on the faces of readers young and old but through her mouth piece ‘ Gogi’, Nigar also highlights social issues, suggests solutions and disseminates information and education.
Nigar explained how she wrapped public buses in a number of cities with illustrated cartoons depicting powerful messages about burning social issues such as the need to educate girls, fight terrorism and extremism and promote human rights. She showed a number of animation spots highlighting such issues. She then showed some of her Awareness comic books which she has produced, in Urdu, English and Pashto. She informed the audience that with the support, of Society for Tolerance, Environment and Education through Entertainment (STEER ) she has distributed these comic awareness books among 17,000 school children of less privileged sections of society in a number of cities and villages. She presented a set of her books to the hosts.
Her mission she said is now to get the rest of 17,000 sets distributed among the marginalized communities for which she needs “Champions of Change” from University students to philanthropists to active members of the civil society who feel the need to eradicate ignorance and spread awareness by sponsoring these set of seven books for young people to bring about a change in mindsets.
Inspector General of Police and National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism Authority Ihsan Ghani (PSP) appreciated the cartoons, animated spots and Nigar’s creativity to communicating messages on tough subjects with humour. He was of the opinion that Gogi studios approach could be incorporated for the challenges that are faced by the Police Force, that Gogi could help raise awareness for civic sense as well as in reducing the gap between public and police
Lastly Nigar Nazar requested everyone to participate in her campaign of spreading social awareness through the Gogi comic books by purchasing them . For every purchase, steer will match it by donating the same number of books to children of underprivileged communities.