Islamabad -The United States Agency for International Development Mission Director John Groarke Monday visited a school in Islamabad and read books with students in honour of World Book Day, the US embassy said in a statement.
Reading is a critical foundational skill, upon which all future learning – and earning – is built. According to the 2015 Pakistan Education Statistics, 60 per cent of students age 10 and older are literate. Learning to read takes practice – both in the school and out of the school.
Communities across Pakistan often lack access to reading materials. Through the Pakistan Reading Project, USAID aims to improve the reading skills of 1.3 million children across Pakistan through working with teachers and involving communities to bolster a culture of reading and bring books and other reading materials directly to children, said the statement.
Speaking on the occasion, John Groarke said, reading was a life skill. “To learn this skill, children need to practice their reading skills and parents must read to their children and with their children,” he added.
Groarke said a reading culture develops when entire communities encourage, practice, and appreciate books and the habit of reading. “Today is, indeed, a special day because it is World Book Day – and what could be a better way to celebrate this day than by reading with our children,” he said.
Through the $165 million Pakistan Reading Project, USAID supports provincial and regional Departments of Education to improve classroom learning environments for reading, improve policies and systems for reading, and build community-based support for reading in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Pakistani academics and American legal experts said Intellectual Property Rights stimulate economic growth in Pakistan as IPR protected and encouraged innovation and creativity which were key factors in generating economic activities, and help industry create new jobs and compete in the international market.
This consensus was developed at a roundtable discussion on IPR for entrepreneurship and innovation, with a focus on IT and engineering, jointly organized here by the US embassy and the National University of Science and Technology, said a US embassy statement.
At the roundtable, academics from NUST, US officials, and a Pakistani-American expert on IPR discussed the wide range of issues relating to IPRs and economic growth with engineering and business students at NUST’s campus. The event featured a keynote address by Pakistani-American Haris Bajwa, a renowned expert on IPR.
Bajwa, who has spent more than a decade developing and defending patents for companies such as Google, Samsung, and AOL, highlighted the importance of IPR in creating a knowledge economy, said: “Intellectual property rights are the fertile soil of invention, and government policies should work to enhance that fertility.”
John K. Dickerson, a Senior Commercial Law Advisor at the US Department of Commerce in Washington emphasized the role of intellectual property in attracting foreign direct investment and promoting economic development.
Following the speeches, Bajwa and Dickerson participated in a panel discussion with Dr Ashfaque Hassan, Dean of Social Sciences at NUST; Dr Muhammad Shahid, a professor in the School of Chemical and Materials Engineering; and S M Zaidi, Dean of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Ameen Imam, an Attorney Advisor at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, also participated in the discussion.
The NUST event is one of a series of activities sponsored by the US embassy in Islamabad to celebrate World IP Day on April 26. Each year, US embassies around the world celebrate World IP Day with activities, events, and campaigns designed to help raise international awareness of the importance of intellectual property rights. This year’s theme, Innovation – Improving Lives, highlights ordinary people implementing extraordinary new ideas to change the world for the better.
shafqat ali
