ISLAMABAD, Jan 7: A youth leadership organization, Future Leaders of Pakistan (FLP), has been awarded the ‘Seen or Heard Award’ by the British Youth Parliament which accords recognition to youth bodies for their contribution to development work. Pakistan’s FLP was chosen for the award out of 150 countries for their two programmes, ‘Parliament Watch’ and ‘Dialogue on Leadership’.

The FLP held a briefing at the Nomad Art Gallery in Saidpur village the other day to brief media about their activities and the announcement of the international award.

“The youth needs to be more proactive and play a constructive role in society if the youth is not going to do anything, then who is,” said Zoone Abbas, vice-president of FLP.

The Pakistani youth has often been labeled as apathetic and complainers. Many believe that the youth need to take charge and fill in gaps of inadequacy whether they are in our social, economic or political structure, said Tamreez Imran, FLP’s president.

Atif Siddiqui, the acting president for the Islamabad chapter of the oganisation, described the six main projects the FLP revolved around. Parliament Watch, which was one of the internationally-awarded programmes, is an interactive website to promote informed voting behaviour by creating transparency of the election process.

It played the role of monitoring the candidates of 2008 elections and hopes to make it a ‘watchdog’ by giving people the chance to raise issues; both wrongdoings and good work.

The second project, ‘Dialogue on Leadership’ is a series of workshops targeting the youth to encourage dialogue on issues that are important for the development of Pakistan.

Participants of this project also get an opportunity to present small and feasible projects to an ‘experts panel’ who give feedback, and if they become FLP members then they get a platform guidance and resources to make it a reality.

The Leadership Mentoring Programme aims at providing FLP members with mentors who can guide them to excel in their respective fields.

FLP Eentrepreneurs’ Club focuses on providing guidance and counseling to the youth in starting their own business and providing them with a platform to access investors.

FLP creates incentives for members to write, think and initiate discussion and to help members to become published authors.

The last core programme of FLP is the Human Rights Committee that is a group of members working to bring about change and create awareness on human rights issues through petitioning, letter writing, peaceful protests, awareness campaigns, seminars and workshops.

Membership of FLP is open to the youth aged between 18 and 35 and especially to those who wish to make a positive change in society.

The briefing ended with the new members being sworn in to the organization and group pictures.

Through their joint efforts the briefing ended with a sense that the Pakistani youth is rising to the challenges of this country by innovative ideas run by patriotism.