Ever since its founding more than two decades ago and throughout the course of its existence, Shehersaaz has been striving to pursue the vision, goals and objectives its founders had set for it. For this, Shehersaaz adopted a multi pronged strategy including:

  • Generation and dissemination of knowledge
  • Building, evolving and sustaining partnerships and networks and promoting broad based collaborations
  • Training and capacity building
  • Awareness, advocacy and campaigning
  • Execution of projects for demonstration of successful approaches, strategies and technologies/techniques

PCUSRP

Pakistan Covid-19 Urban Slums Response Programme

The world is in grip of a global pandemic—the COVID-19. Pakistan began to get affected by it in early 2020 when the initial cases surfaced in different parts of the country. Subsequently the federal and provincial governments started making efforts to respond to this situation. Given the nature of its spread, the pandemic soon appeared to be largely an urban phenomenon.

In April 2020, Shehersaaz designed a COVID-19 response program and also managed to raise some funds from philanthropists. Given its long association with UN-HABITAT Pakistan, it invited it to join this initiative. With mutual understanding the subject program was further refined and expanded. It was decided that the UN-HABITAT Pakistan will be the overall coordinating agency for this initiative. It was also decided to launch a pilot phase of this program initially in two slums of Rawalpindi city namely Dhok Hassu and Dhok Mangtal. Ministry of Climate Change, UN-HABITAT Pakistan and three Rawalpindi based non-government organizations namely Aman Development Foundation (ADF), Akhtar Hameed Khan Memorial Trust and National Cleaner Production Center (NCPC) became partners to this initiative with Shehersaaz. The main activities of this pilot project included:

  • Awareness through installation of posters and banners at prominent locations and through dissemination of messages through Social Media and SMS and Whats App messages
  • Installation of hand washing facilities
  • Installation of dust bins
  • Training of sanitary workers
  • Livelihood support for local women to manufacture face masks
  • Distribution of hand sanitizers
  • Cleanliness campaigns
  • Disinfection of streets

Urban Development and Human Settlements

Celebration of International UN Days

Under its awareness raising efforts and connecting international debates with local human settlement issues, Shehersaaz regularly celebrates UN international days of relevance in partnership with concerned educational, government and non-government institutions. The prominent days that are celebrated include:

  1. World Rivers Days (Shehersaaz is a member of International Rivers Network-IRN)
  2. World Environment Day
  3. World Habitat Day (Shehersaaz is a member of World Urban Campaign)
  4. World Cities Day
  5. World Water Day
  6. Earth Day
  7. International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction