Disclaimer: Considering this story in mind, please dont bug me if the people behind this ad. are not reliable. Its shared here purely in the context of photoblog and the way innovative minds advertise their services in Karachi, a city well known as Business hub in Pakistan.

Those of you who might be interested in the cause of Education can benefit from this upcoming event. The theme of the conference is very apt with the conditions our country is facing with after the recent floods.
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Transforming Pedagogies Emerging Contexts & Texts of Teacher Education
October 26-28, 2010
Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development Karachi, Pakistan

This year’s international conference aims to share innovative and integrated pedagogies aims to counteract human crisis and oppressive situations, which have implications for issues of human development as a whole, and in doing so invokes transforming potential of education in general and teacher education in particular, to search for ‘new’ language of possibilities and pedagogies for change.

 The conference will focus on following inter-linked themes:

• Changing contexts and texts of teacher education
• Critical and innovative pedagogies for social change
• Pedagogies for emergencies and other complex contexts

Interested participants can register themselves at http://www.aku.edu/events/IEDIC2010/dynamic/Registration.aspx

More details at: http://www.aku.edu/events/IEDIC2010/

I found this car at Shahr-e-Faisal near Park Avenue. I really like the idea that how a person changed the presence of an old car. Yes, this is why Karachi Rocks! :)

The country is faced with the most challenging natural disaster, the recent floods have rendered more than 14 million people homeless. Thousands of which only a couple of ours drive away form our own city Karachi. And since a lot of small groups from Karachi, mostly students from various university are heading out to the various areas of Sindh here is a very useful blog post by Sana Saleem of FLP which explains what items are urgently needed to more effectively and efficiently help the flood affected people here in Sindh, and more specifically in Thatta.

Visit: http://asiancorrespondent.com/sanasaleem1/help-guide-for-relief-in-thatta

Image Credits : http://flp.org.pk/

While the world is not willing to trust our government, the private sector, NGO, Social Org, Student Org, media and all others are still playing a crucial role in putting an effort to lessen the miseries of the flood victims, estimated to be around 15+ million all over Pakistan. [ How & Where i can help ?  Click here ]

Every day I receive many email/SMS notifications/requests on flood relief work. Dawn captured these moments from a similar initiative taken by the students of SZABIST and Indus School of Arts & Architecture Karachi to raise money for flood victims. The student witnessed some inspiring moments. “One guy just dropped Rs. 10,000 – just like that” said one student. “What’s more interesting is that the people in the more affluent cars are not stopping yet continuously rickshaw drivers gave as much as 10 or 20 rupees” said another student.

Update: PSO pump between Baloch Colony Bridge and Kavish Crown is open right now for both petrol and CNG. Pics taken an hour back show chaos, slight noak-jhonk and an effort by rangers & locals to keep things under some discipline at PSO near Baloch bridge. Note : The station usually accepts credit-card but not today so keep some cash.

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May 14th 2010, Multi/Interdisciplinary Research Interest Group at AKU-IED hosted a session by Ms. Rumana Hussain which happens to be her birthday as well. The discussion was based on a brief overview and her experiences of writing her book ‘KarachiWala: a sub-continent within a city’. The book celebrates the diversity of the city ranging from ethnicity, religion and occupation; and equally a test of how much familiar are you with your chosen city, at least for me.

Related news stories and reviews: Karachi Metblogs, Dawn Blog, Daily Times

The book captivates the spirit of change by which Karachi breathes. The writer humbly stated that she is neither a sociologist nor an anthropologist but it is only her interest in people and the city which drove the project. The most difficult process was the making contacts and accessibility of people and the most rewarding were the interesting stories that came from the elderly and low-income groups, not due to their misery but of cultural richness. The 330 pages covering various stories accompanied by hundreds of photographs is a testimony of the time and amount of hard work that have gone into this piece of art.

Some interesting features about the book that caught my attention are,
• the inclusion of traditional and progressive families of same ethnicities;
• a contrast in urban landscape with respect to socio-economic groups;
• inclusion of few legends, festivals and customs;
• maps that trace various movements (an amusing example would be route of a person on his cycle for selling fish, population growth or anagrams of ‘what we are and what we speak’ ),
• inclusion of street children, jogis(nomads) and pathans living in deras
• assimilation of intra-diversity in specific religions (I didn’t knew that we have Tamil Christian families in our city though have see people of Goan origin very often but I still thought that the Christian population only comprised of Punjabi converts).

A very relevant question was posed about the sense of belonging with the city because there is a constant influx of migrants who are living in this geography but would choose their villages over Karachi. Does Karachi really belong to someone when most of its dwellers are migrants having multiple-identities? This was very-well reflected by the speaker that whoever lives here and gives back to the city has a claim over city. We all are Karachiwalas at the end of the day.

In my personal opinion, the book can serve as a role-model for issues related to pluralism. It radiates humanistic approach and is sensitive yet non-judgmental in its advocacy. Whenever we talk about diversity of our country in main-stream circles, we always limit our talks to provincial diversities and thus raise voices of different claims and rights of these provinces but what we need to embrace is that we are much more than provinces and each minority needs to be given the due its deserves, most importantly the respect.

The book can be ordered from http://jaal.org

Ps: I saw her during an interesting show on state of literature and reading habits in The First Blast on DawnNews channel where she also talked briefly about the book but thanks to AKU-IED, it was an interesting experience to not only know more about the book but also the experiences of the author during the process of documenting it.