Peace & Justice Network

Aawaz II - Knowledge HUB Punjab

Programme Vision: A more inclusive, tolerant and peaceful Pakistan, with less discrimination, harmful practices, and and exploitation.

Aawaz II is working with local communities in 37 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Punjab to promote the rights of children, women, youth and other marginalised groups. The British Council is leading on the delivery of the Aawaz II community engagement component to enhance awareness and facilitate behaviour change around harmful practices such as gender-based violence (GBV), child marriage, exclusion, exploitation, and intolerance.

The British Council is leading the delivery of the Aawaz II community engagement component, which aims to raise awareness, promote behaviour change, and enhance citizen-state engagement across 38 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, with funding support from FCDO and UKAid. Peace & Justice Network (PJN) serves as the provincial lead partner for Aawaz II in Punjab. The community component focuses on providing information referrals, facilitate citizen-state engagement for uptake of services and enhance capacities of local communities for behaviour change to reduce community acceptance of child marriage, gender-based violence (GBV) and intolerance.

Aawaz II Programme Journey Video

Aawaz II Programme Guide:

Key Interventions

Establishing community forums and providing capacity building and institutional support to forum members, which eventually generates ownership and empowers them to address behaviour change, reduce harmful practices, and adopt appropriate means of pre-empting community conflict without infringing on the rights of the vulnerable.
Strengthening citizen engagement to effectively raise informed and focused demands. This is critical when engaging government duty bearers and elected representatives, when advocating for service provision, budgetary allocations, efficient and timely use of resources, or the protection of vulnerable groups’ rights. (Aawaz Aagahi Centre Booklet in URDU and English)
Training and development of Aawaz II Change Agents, who engage with communities through Social Action Projects (SAPs).
Developing and disseminating behaviour change messages using interpersonal, print, radio and digital media.