NCHD launches ‘video training lessons’

Islamabad : The National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) on Tuesday launched here the 'Video Training Lessons' for literacy and non-formal basic education.

The ceremony was attended by the representative of JICA Pakistan, American Refugee Committee (ARC), HOPE-87 RSPN Pakistan and the representative of government and private sector.

The chief guest on the occasion was CEO of the Human Development Foundation (HDF) Col. (r) Azhar Saleem, who said around 31,000 teachers were rendering services in the literacy centres and non-formal schools in Pakistan.

"Providing opportunities for their in-service training and continuous professional development is a challenging task there is a dire need of providing continuous quality improvement through utilizing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in teacher trainings," he said.

Azhar said the NCHD had taken a good initiative by developing video based training lessons for the capacity building of teachers and field officers working in remote and backward areas of the country.

"It would bring quality in the delivery of literacy and basic education to learners in the marginalized communities," he said.

NCHD Chairman Col (r) Dr. Amirullah Marwat said the commission was national lead agency for literacy in Pakistan.

"We have honor to literate 3.98 million people and provide basic education to out-of-school children across the country. At present, we were running more than 6000 community Feeder Schools and 2000 Adult literacy centres, and 100 Madaris schools," he added.

He said the Commission has been taking different initiatives to improve the effectiveness of our programs and interventions in the field of literacy and non-formal basic education.

Introducing Information and Communication Technologies in the teacher training programs was one of our key development strategies.

The NCHD has team has prepared six video lessons on Community mobilization, literacy, and topics in English and Math subjects. The video training lessons have been field tested in Islamabad and Mardan districts, he said.

"Recently we have conducted two days workshop as well with the support of UNESCO," I am happy that the video lessons were ready to be launched today," he added. These videos would be used in the training of thousands of literacy and non-formal teachers, he added.