Islamabad: Thousands of students from across the country, including students from madrasa, attended Pakistan’s National Youth Carnival 2017, held in Peshawar, the capital of the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
This was the first time that madrasa (religious seminary) students and mainstream students participated in a cultural event, making the National Youth Carnival 2017 a unique gathering of Pakistani youth.
“This year at the youth carnival, we have included madrasa students because they’re considered a marginalised segment of society, and have fewer opportunities” said Usman Khan from Liaison Corporation, one of the organisers of the event.
The students from Islamic seminaries mostly participated in categories such as painting, calligraphy, qirat, na’at, essay writing and others.
“The participants belong to major educational institutions as well as from 17 madrasas,” Mehmood Khan, KP Minister for Sports & Culture.
“Youth are the asset of the country and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has taken various steps to engage them in healthy and productive activities” and doing its best to offer them every opportunity to explore their skills and talents, Mehboob Khan added.
Recently, Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa also called for widening the scope of education at madrasas to enable the students to play a more positive and productive role in society.
Pakistan’s National Youth Carnival 2017 thus offered the perfect platform of interaction and communication between the mainstream and madrasa students of Pakistan with an aim to “establish linkages for peace building and development,” Mehboob Khan said.
The four-day event that was organised at 30 venues inside the Peshawar Sports Complex was attended by thousands of students from 110 universities and madrasas from across the country, including Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PAK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB).
The three-day youth carnival included diverse events including drama, thematic art, painting, calligraphy, short film, Urdu, English, Pashto singing, cultural dance, music band, spelling bee, Na’at, English and Urdu declamation, essay writing in Urdu and Pashto, poetry and quiz competition, business plan, stand-up comedy and photography.
The event organised by KP directorate of sports and youth affairs represented all cultures of Pakistan from Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, PAK, FATA and KP.
KP chief minister, Pervez Khattak, said youngsters of KP province have proven their worth as a vehicle of change, adding his government will continue to provide facilities to the youth that constitutes 60 per cent of the country’s population.
“For the first time, we have introduced youth policy and established a proper mechanism for the facilitation of youth in all sectors,” said Khattak, adding that annual developmental grant of Rs1 billion (Dh33.45 million) for the youth department would be given in 2018.
KP chief minister later gave away the winner’s trophy and cash prizes to the winners and runners-up. The winning players were awarded Rs60,000 each while the runner-up’s were given Rs40,000 apart from medals.
The University of Punjab earned top honours by winning 11 gold and four silver medals in 30 different disciplines while Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad won one gold and four silver medals to bag the overall runners-up position. KMC Peshawar, COMSATS Abbottabad and Gomal University Dera Esmail Khan won two gold and two silver medals whereas Abdul Wali Khan University earned two gold medals.
“The provincial government spent Rs65 million on the event while prizes worth Rs500,000 were given to competition winners” Mehmood Khan added.
Youth from member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — are expected to join the event next year, organisers said.
