First Ever Youth Peace Summit In Skardu| Day 01

 

First Ever Youth Peace Summit In Skardu| Day 01

Baltistan Youth Organization in collaboration with Youth Impact Pakistan organized a three days youth summit in Skardu city from September 9^th to September 11, 2022, which is the first ever event of this kind allowing participants from different institutions and age to participate and learn from the activities and from the expert speakers.

As this beautiful planet is in a dire need of the existence of peace, from household issues to the majore issues of the world like that of the Palestine issue, The Kashmir issue, and the recent Ukraine issue, the world need some peace building approaches. And I think such summits on peace building can be the initials.

The whole summit was based on the concept of developing peace among people and societies and this summit demanded the participants to reflect their productive and unique ideas regarding peace building via their activities and projects.

Prior to this event, the team BYO had almost 25 seminars in different colleges and universities of Skardu to enlighten the light of awareness among the youth about peace building. This step was no doubt a warm up session before this successful event. This three days peace summit was based on some outdoor activities, where the participants had to compete other participants by using their creative and academic skills. The 03 days scheme was

• ·         First Day in Kharpocho Fort
• ·         Second Day in Chunda Valley
• ·         Third Day in Kachura Valley

 This article will cover the introduction of the organizing team and also the activities of the first day.

Day 01, Friday. (September 9^th,2022) In Kharpocho Fort

The first day of the summit captured a huge number of participants, and on a rough estimate there were more than 90 participants. The first day was scheduled as

·         Opening Ceremony

·         Instructions and safety cautions

·         Grouping

·         Transportation

·         Hiking to the Kharpocho Fort

·         Flag Presentation on the concept of building peace

·         Presentations about the Fort

·         Prayers and Lunch Break

·         Special session, Guest Speaker

·         Result announcements

·         Successful Endings of the Day 01

 

Mir Israr Sadparvi (BYO, Youth Impactor) and Willayat Ali (BYO, Youth Impactor)were given the charge of coordinators and hosts.

Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony was held at early 07:00 AM in Bransa Inn Hotel, Agha Hadi Chowk Skardu, where all the participants were addressed by the team leaders of the Youth Impact Pakistan and The Baltistan Youth Organization. It was really good to hear the success stories of Shakeel Fida (the president BYO), where he mentioned how BYO became a team from a single person.

Instructions and safety cautions

After the opening ceremony a correspondent from the Youth Impact Pakistan gave the necessary precautionary measure to keep safety while the hiking. Also there was a small session of physical warm up before going for the hiking. 

Grouping

The third phase was the distributing of the participants in groups. The grouping was made so that the groups may compete each other in the activities.

Transportation

The organizers arranged Vans for the transportation of the participants to the hiking point.

Hiking to the Kharpocho Fort

The hiking to the fort was a bit challenge to the female participants, luckily the whole hiking phase was better, YES! Many got exhausted but everyone managed to reach the fort safely. The hike was not more than 15 -20 minutes.

Flag Presentation on the concept of building peace

An activity of drawing was given at the starting point of hiking to the groups where they got instructions to use their creative, academic and inductive skills regarding peace building to ensure awareness about unity. The concept was to bring out a message of peace from the art works. After reaching the fort the participants were supposed to give their presentations. And that happened after a short break to rest. All teams displayed their arts and drawings and gave presentations. Husnain Tabassum, One of the organizers  , said

"The messages these brilliant minds brought out from their drawings were really above the expectations"

 

Presentations about the Fort

Gathering amazing facts of the history about the Kharpocho fort was the second task of the groups and presenting those hidden facts was the third task. Again! amazingly the groups drawn out amazing facts and the presentations were also good enough to be said best for the judges.

Prayers and Lunch Break

The participants were given enough time break for offering the prayers, after the prayers they were severed by some delicious spicy biryani.

Willayat Ali ( one of the Organizer) appreciating the hard working team said

“The food was amazing by the way, again beyond expectations. Serving food in a place where water availability was really hard shows the dedications of the whole team to make the event successful”.

 

Special session, Guest Speaker

This whole trip was based on the golden words being delivered by the guest speaker. The guest of the evening was none other than the famous historian and writer Mr .Yousuf Hussainabadi. He delivered his speech on the history of the fort and also about the leaders of the fort. Above all his appearance on the fort all the way after a hectic hike at an age more than 75 years , I Guess, depicted that Mr yousuf Hussainabadi is a real lover of education, and no doubt he is the torchbearer of education in the Baltistan region . For these kind efforts the team Youth Impact and the team Baltistan Youth Organization thanked Mr. Yousuf Hussainabadi for coming as the chief guest of the event. Mr Yousuf Hussainabadi was accompanied by a famous poet of Baltistan, Mr Ahsan Danish.

Result announcements

After the precious session of Mr yousuf Hussainabadi, the last round was to declare/ announce the results. The presenters/ host announced the results of the day 01 and appreciated the hard work put on by all the groups.

Organizers

• 1.       Baltistan Youth Organization, BYO
• 2.       Youth Impact Pakistan(Collaboration)

Moral Support

Mr. Husnain Tabbassum

(An Educationist, A Mentor, Motivational Speaker, Columnist, PhD Scholar)

Team BYO

 BYO, OPS Team

 Special Thanks To GB Tourist Police

The whole team is thankful to GB Tourist Police specially Abid Sadpara and Naseem Sadpara for being so much caring regarding safety and security during the whole Peace Summit