Pakistan

By Annie Sarfraz Over 40 people participated at a community meeting in the village of Swabi, KPK, Pakistan, organised by HCR in January 2017. The purpose was to help community understand they have the capacity to bring about positive change in their community. Most of the members said they had never attended a meeting where…

By Annie Sarfraz Community leader: “Sir, you could have cancelled the meeting and stayed home. It’s been raining for the last three days”. Hazeen: “Rain can’t stop us”! HCR has been working in Charsadda village in Pakistan since 2013, using the communication for development approach to help people identify, understand and resolve their health and…

By Hazeen Latif Sahib Gul may be disabled, but his talent for art and music speaks for itself and he is a person who never gives up.  “My name is Sahib Gul, which means king of the roses,” he told a meeting of the newly established ‘New Dawn Community Services’, a community-based organization (CBO) in…

By Jon Hargreaves “You have lost me my business,” health clinic owner,  Zahid jokingly tells HCR Pakistan director Hazeen Latif.   He was speaking at the opening of the new drinking well in his village, provided by HCR, funded by an Australian church.  “Since this well opened three weeks ago,” Zahid says, “I am selling less…

The tenth anniversary for Syban program was on the 11th of May. Syban Radio program was launched in Pakistan by Feba Pakistan in 2006 as a response to the devastating Muzaffarabad earthquake in late 2005, where 80 000 died and an estimated 4 million others left homeless.  Various government agencies in Pakistan had asked HCR…

  Our story begins in October 2005, when a magnitude 7.6 earthquake changed Pakistan-administered Azad Jammu Kashmir forever. The quake shook a mountainous region around Muzaffarabad, a city 100 kilometres northeast of Islamabad, at the foothills of the Himalaya mountains. At least 86,000 people were killed, more than 69,000 injured. Not far from the epicentre…

By Ross James When attackers stormed the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, 20 January 2016, they exposed a great irony. Twenty one people, not including four men killed by security forces, died. Among those dead are 17 students and a lecturer who shot back at the gunmen with his pistol, to…

Say “Pakistan” and people think the worst, because the news presents the worst. But Pakistan contains much beauty, much of interest and wonderful personal stories of hope. Nadeem Awan, disabled since childhood, is one of those stories. A few years ago Nadeem began listening to a radio program in his city of Muzaffarabad in Azad…

An international conference in Pakistan has heard HCR explain how community-centred radio programming can help support sustainable development. International scientists gathered to report on sustainable crop technology at the “Scientists for Sustainability” forum in Islamabad, which was organized by the Lok Sanjh Foundation (LSF) and the Rural Business Development Center. HCR Pakistan Director, Hazeen Latif, was invited to deliver a paper about HCR’s…

HCR Pakistan, in collaboration with other agencies has been hosting a health camp in a deprived region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.  Working closely with a local radio station, the Director of HCR Pakistan, Hazeen Latif, said that many of the illnesses that presented themselves during the day could have been prevented with better knowledge.  “Radio…