People™ has been working proactively to eliminate Polio from its country of origin, Pakistan, collaborating with international partners who share the same goal. For many years, on the 24th of October observing World Polio Day, People™ along with UNICEF has engaged with civil society to raise awareness on the importance of the Polio vaccine and has continued to work all year round to facilitate its administration across the country. This year, People arranged region-wide campaigns in various cities of two major provinces: Punjab and KPK.
By collaborating across sectors – bringing the corporate and the local communities together in the fight to eradicate polio – members of the Polio Eradication Campaign, recruited and trained by PeopleTM, organized events in various locations. Social Mobilisers took to their designated areas and invited people from local communities with their families to take part along with community heads and trusted members of society who as guest speakers spoke with the general public on the importance of administering the polio vaccine. These informative sessions were prepared to bring attention to the disease and encourage a collective behavior where the general reaction of the public involves administering the polio vaccine for their children at the right time.
People and Comnet’s staff visited local schools to engage with children and their parents who were invited to attend talks and seminars where important information was shared by experts and people from UNICEF leading the Polio Eradication campaign. After the administration of the polio vaccine, awareness sessions were conducted where children were encouraged to participate by being included in various activities that were designed to instill information on the matter and enable individual learning – these were inclusive of poster making sessions that would later be displayed around the campus. The sessions were concluded with children being handed certificates for their participation.
We have been able to support UNICEF throughout this campaign by recruiting and training members that have become frontline workers and support staff contributing actively on the ground. We are happy to share that in this time, we have administered more than 5000 vaccines and are planning the execution of all the future parts of this campaign. A lot of our work has involved spreading viable information and creating awareness in general public – to push prominent change and take us one step further in creating a polio free Pakistan.
