Summer Camp for children continues at Lok Virsa

Islamabad
The workshops of Summer Camp are continuing at the National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage (Lok Virsa) with a prime focus on Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan.
Nasreen Iqbal, director of the Grammar Public School, Rawalpindi, is conducting the workshops while around 20 children aging 6-12 are among the participants.
The programme includes introduction about the culture, heritage, geographical location, traditions, rituals and festivities of both Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan, presentation through multi-media slides about the cultural heritage, brainstorming, physical activity, songs and exercises, national songs and dance, story-telling, art activity, question and answer session.
The Summer Camp with the theme: Learn Balochi Language and Glimpses into Balochi Culture and Learn Wakhi Language and the Diversity of Gilgit Baltistan, has been arranged at the Pakistan National Museum of Ethnology, popularly known as Heritage Museum.
The camp aims at providing an orientation to the children about the language, poetry, crafts, music and festivals of both these communities. It will also create ownership among children regarding Pakistan's languages and cultural heritage and above all, will reaffirm our identity of being multi-cultural and pluralistic country, said an official of Lok Virsa.
Pakistan, a multi-lingual country, is enriched with more than 24 languages and dialects. These languages portray excellence of literature, poetry, folk songs, and spiritual quotes of Sufi saints and enhances the richness of the cultural heritage. The regional languages, though distinct from each other, promote unity among people of different provinces/regions and cultivate love, respect and a firm adherence to the universal brotherhood.
In Balochistan, people speak different languages but there is a similarity in their literature, beliefs, rituals and customs.
Wakhi people are occasionally called Pamiris. The origin of this language is Wakhan and it is, according to many sources, more than four thousand years old.
It is spoken by the inhabitants of the Wakhan Corridor in Gilgit-Baltistan, in some parts of Tajkistan and Xinjiang in western China. The workshops will continue till August 25.