Our Content Editor, Cassie, takes you along on the journey as Women Rise launch BackpackX with partners in Pakistan.
TL;DR The Women Rise team launch BackpackX, our VR educational initiative, with partner schools and organisations in Pakistan. This includes two school visits, two panels and a workshop with the British Council.
For those of you who haven’t already heard about BackpackX and our plans to reimagine education, you can read all about it in our introductory article. Once you’re up to date, read on….
Pakistan, a Country Close to Our Hearts
The team took the decision to host the launch of BackpackX in Pakistan for a number of reasons. Firstly, Pakistan is the home of our founders, Maliha Abidi and Aski Hassan, and so it is naturally the first place they think of. Secondly, Pakistan has some of the lowest education rates in the world. 44% of children aged 5-16 are not in school (UNESCO) and around 40% of the nation is illiterate (Dawn). With over 258 million children out of school worldwide, with 129 million of them girls, Pakistan seemed like a good place to begin to address these issues and bring new and exciting educational initiatives to as many children as possible.
The Women Rise team arrived in Karachi, Pakistan in late October 2023 with a packed itinerary and boundless enthusiasm! Excited to meet students and teachers across the country, we prepared for some busy days ahead!
The Schools
Our first workshops were with schools run by Zindagi Trust. Their mission perfectly aligns with our own: they want to foster potential and ensure that all children have equal access to education. Zindagi Trust is working to reform government schools in Pakistan through pilot projects at model schools and advocacy with the government. We began the trip with a visit to SMB Fatima Jinnah school, a school that was adopted by Zindagi Trust in 2007.
After setting up the rooms, we greeted 35 students (aged between 12 and 15) and 15 staff members and began our very first BackpackX session - a historic moment for Women Rise! We started by telling the students a little bit about Women Rise and our mission, before going on to speak about VR technology, education and climate change, the subject of our first animation. Then it was time for the VR headsets to come out! We had four headsets with us, so students took it in turns to put them on and watch the four-minute VR 360 animation.
‘It made me feel like I am part of the story.’ - Sumaiya, 13, Class 8
We had such a fantastic response from the students. So many students expressed their excitement before putting on the headsets and then were blown away by the VR 360 animation. It seemed the desert scene was particularly evocative (watch this space for how to view the animation yourself)! The students specifically noted how informative and useful the session was for their studies. It was the first time using a VR headset for 15-year-old Saira, who said ‘this was so helpful for learning specific topics’, while 13-year-old Hibza said BackpackX ‘helped me understand a lot more about climate change’.
We finished up the day with a conversation to see how the students found the experience. We were also really thrilled to be able to hand out stickers, Women Rise artworks and copies of Maliha’s books to many of the students.
Our second day ran much the same, this time taking place at Khatoon-e-Pakistan Government Girls School, also in Karachi. We ran the workshop with another 35 students and again had some wonderful feedback. The school staff were equally impressed with BackpackX, commenting that ‘all parts of the Women Rise program [were] interesting, informative and engaged students' attention’ and:
‘Students' excitement about VR technology led them to understand or have know-how about the topic, helping teachers to explain the topic easily.’
What a great start to our launch programme!
Engaging with the wider community
We didn’t want our trip to Pakistan to pass without also speaking with the wider community about BackpackX and the power of VR for education. We worked with the incredible Google Developers’ Group in Karachi to take part in a panel discussion at Designist’s offices one evening. Titled ‘Digital Renaissance: NFTs, Web 3, and Artistic Evolution’, the event was an intimate get-together for UI/UX designers, design enthusiasts, founders, programmers, and NFT artists who wanted to learn more about Web 3.0, Metaverse, Design, and the NFT space. Maliha and Aski both joined the panel and were able to speak about all aspects of the Women Rise community, from our NFT artworks to our latest initiatives! They were joined on the panel by Khizer Kazmi, a talented local experience designer.
After a fascinating evening discussion, we set off the next day for Lahore to continue our work. We were incredibly excited to be visiting LUMS, one of the top universities in Pakistan, to speak with the Women in Computing Society, alongside any other interested parties from the university. This event was focused around the future of learning, and EdTech in particular. Joining Maliha on the panel were Mr. Jazib Zahir, COO Tintash (a leading app/game development house in Pakistan) and Ms. Faryal Siddiqui (LUMSx). Such a fantastic line-up was bound to create a thought-provoking and engaging conversation and that it did! The event hoped to help students to understand the swiftly changing education landscape, and the importance of technology's role in it, by bringing together experts and EdTech enthusiasts from different platforms. After the talk, we were able to give twenty LUMS students the opportunity to try out BackpackX for themselves!
Time for one more workshop
Working with international partners is incredibly important for us at Women Rise, and one such partner for BackpackX has been the British Council. Working with Talha Chishti and his team in Lahore, we were able to deliver another BackpackX workshop to ten students from a local Muslim Hands school. Supported by three amazing teachers and six British Council staff members, we were able to present BackpackX to the group, as well facilitating the VR experience and running a roundtable conversation afterwards about everything the students had learnt during the session. The staff members were equally excited to try the BackpackX immersive experience as well!
Our findings
We began this journey with high hopes and a lot of logistics. We wanted to celebrate the power of technology for education and to reach some of the most marginalised communities. In truth, we didn’t know how the students would respond. Would they feel connected to the animations? Would they take away any important learnings? Would they, overall, love BackpackX? Well, the answer turned out to be a resounding yes! We asked for feedback from the students that we worked with and we found out that:
- 92.5% students rated BackpackX 4 or above (out of 5) for overall experience.
- 87.5% students found the BackpackX VR experience ‘engaging’ or ‘very engaging’.
- When asked if BackpackX helped them understand more about climate change, 76% said it helped them understand ‘a lot’ more, with a further 16% saying it helped ‘a little more’.
The teachers were equally enthusiastic. 77% said the programme enhanced or complemented their teaching on climate change either ‘significantly’ or ‘to some extent’ and:
100% said that students seemed ‘engaged’ or ‘very engaged’ throughout the session.
We are incredibly grateful to all the organisations and partners that we worked with to launch BackpackX in Pakistan. It was a really emotional experience for the whole team and we were so pleased to see months and months of hard work be realised!
