Chief Executive SABAWON, Mr Muhammad Tariq has been invited to present a paper at the third seminar in the series by the Beyond Access: Gender, Education and Development project, to be held on 28 April 2004 at Oxfam GB, Oxford, UK. The event will be followed by a workshop, to be held on 29 April 2004, on policy and advocacy strategies. The theme of the seminar is ';Resources For Gender Equality And Quality Education'. The Beyond Access project is jointly co-ordinated by the Institute of Education, London and Oxfam GB, and is funded by the UK Department for International Development. It is linked to work for the Millennium Development Target for gender equity in education by 2005, and aims to raise awareness and circulate new knowledge on gender equality in education amongst policymakers, practitioners and academics worldwide.

SABAWON has entered into a partnership agreement with Phoenix Consulting Corp., Inc. (PCCI), which is a U.S.A based consulting firm. In Pakistan, PCCI is represented through a Lahore-based office. The partnership terms include working together in the social sector vis-a-vis pooling common strengths, linkages and synergies creation and producing sustained impacts in the field for socio-economic empowerment of the people of Pakistan.

A two-person team of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) visited Peshawar during February 27-29 to collect qualitative information for a study on the role of NGOs in
basic/primary education in Pakistan. The study is in connection with LUMS NGO PULSE Component of the LUMS-McGill Social Enterprise Development Programme. Coordinated by SABAWON, the team met with a number of NGOs working on primary education in NWFP and held discussions on issues such as contribution of NGOs in the promotion of primary education, partnership mechanisms to influence framework conditions and emerging
community-based education models.

On the sidelines, SABAWON-LUMS institutional linkages were explored for fostering complementarities in the areas of joint research initiatives, internship programme and information sharing and knowledge management.