Bank Alfalah, in collaboration with the Association for Mothers and Newborns (AMAN), Zindagi Trust and Kiran Foundation, has supported the launch of the School-Based Family Learning Initiative, a 12-month programme designed to improve health and financial literacy among mothers, caregivers and students. The initiative uses schools as a platform to extend learning beyond classrooms and engage families with information that can support better health awareness and more informed financial decisions.
The programme was launched at Zindagi Trust’s SMB Fatima Jinnah School in Karachi and will be implemented across three Zindagi Trust schools and two schools operated by Kiran Foundation. The participating schools are located in Karachi and Shangla, allowing the programme to reach students and their families across different communities. The initiative brings together financial-sector, education and social-development organisations to create a structured model for delivering health and financial awareness through existing school networks.
As part of the programme, teachers will receive training to conduct health-literacy sessions for mothers and caregivers. The sessions will use content from AMAN’s digital health-literacy platform, Bakhabar Noujawan, which provides information covering important health and wellbeing topics. By involving teachers and caregivers, the initiative aims to establish a connection between school-based learning and the wider family environment, allowing information shared with students to also reach parents and other members of their households.
Bank Alfalah will work directly with AMAN to integrate financial-literacy content into the Bakhabar Noujawan platform. The financial education component is intended to help mothers and caregivers develop practical knowledge that can assist them in making informed decisions about money and household finances. By combining health and financial education within the same programme, the partners are seeking to address areas of knowledge that directly affect families and their day-to-day decision-making.
The launch event featured remarks from Dr Azra Ahsan, Secretary General of AMAN; Shehzad Roy, Founder and President of Zindagi Trust; Sabina Khatri, Founder and Chairperson of Kiran Foundation; and Madiha Javed Qureshi, Head of Corporate Communication at Bank Alfalah. Their participation reflected the collaboration between the organisations involved in developing and implementing the initiative, with each partner contributing to the programme’s focus on education, health awareness, financial knowledge and community engagement.
Dr Raj Kumar, Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) Programme Director for Sindh, also addressed the event and highlighted the importance of vaccination awareness. He discussed the need for closer collaboration between the Expanded Programme on Immunization and the Education Department to strengthen health awareness and outreach. His remarks added a public-health dimension to the initiative, particularly in using schools as an established point of contact for students and their families.
The School-Based Family Learning Initiative is intended to create a model in which education delivered through schools can extend to mothers, caregivers and wider family groups. Rather than limiting learning activities to students, the programme is designed to involve adults who play an important role in household health and financial decisions. The participating organisations will use the 12-month period to implement the programme, observe its outcomes and document lessons from the experience.
At the end of the programme, the partners plan to document the lessons learned to assess how the approach could potentially be introduced in additional schools. The experience from the three Zindagi Trust schools and two Kiran Foundation schools will provide a basis for evaluating the model and identifying areas for further development. Through its financial-literacy component and AMAN’s health-focused digital platform, the initiative brings together banking, health and education resources in an effort to expand practical knowledge among students, mothers and caregivers.
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