Islamabad

Pakistan

Empowering Diversity and Tackling Disinformation

Two years of supporting activists in the Sunni-majority country’s capital city resulted in projects that championed diversity and countered Covid-related disinformation.

Young Cities began its programming in Pakistan in 2019 through its Youth Civil Activism Network (YouthCAN) initiative. trained 26 activists and supported the launch of three projects that each took on the challenge of promoting diverse narratives and empowering religious minorities in a country where around 91% of its population is Sunni Muslim.

In 2020, the Covid pandemic led to the rise of harmful misinformation and disinformation that spread quickly and unabated, often targeting the country’s women and minorities especially. Young Cities adapted its programme to be delivered entirely remotely, and supported four teams of activists to develop a single campaign that addressed different forms of this disinformation.

Our Impact in Islamabad

We aim for relevant and strategic impact at scale. Working closely with young people in identifying the needs of their communities and the challenges they face, we ensure that the solutions we support them in developing are targeted and sustainable.

Check Corona: Four Teams, One Campaign

In 2020, Young Cities tasked four teams to create content for a collaborative campaign that could respond to the alarming rate at which disinformation related to Covid-19 was feeding discriminatory and extremist discourse in Pakistan.

The campaign, titled ‘Check Corona’, which in Urdu also phonetically translates as “Check – Just Do It.” Under a unified social media campaign brand, each team used a different medium to address a different dimension of misinformation.

A team of women launched a poster series and webinars for various vloggers in the Pakistani digital space to challenge Stereotypes blaming liberal women for causing the pandemic. A well-known amateur comedy troupe, Comedy Square Pakistan, created four comedy sketches that took on religious and political figures they saw as responsible for creating disinformation, reaching millions of viewers on Facebook. One team created posters that educated people on key identifiers of misinformation and disinformation; while a team led by a singer-songwriter created a music video that raised awareness about the consequences of these phenomena.

Watch: YouthCAN in Islamabad (2019)

A diverse team conduct tours of religious sites to raise awareness of the different religions present in Islamabad, giving participants their first glimpse into these communities.

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project

Shut the Fake Up

Pakistan | Islamabad

A team used the most popular sport in Pakistan as a vehicle for raising awareness of the dangers of misinformation and disinformation.

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project

Minority Youth Group

Pakistan | Islamabad

A team of young Christians provided their peers with a civic education that they very rarely have access to, as a religious minority which is often ignored.

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Our partners

The organisations and municipal governments we work with are essential to the success of the Young Cities programme. Together, we continue to effect genuine, relevant change in the communities in which we work.

HIVE Pakistan

HIVE’s experience, networks and expertise have proved time and again invaluable to impactful project delivery. While they are headquartered in Islamabad, they have extensive ties to Lahore and Karachi, where their staff are traveling often for the implementation of our capacity-building and civic education related to P/CVE.

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