 where she's been doing in Pakistan to reach out and especially to reach out to young girls in high school and young women in college. So Imranah, I'm gonna hand it over to you. Thank you so much, Joe. You have to stop sharing, you stop sharing. Oh, I did stop, yeah. Okay, let me share, okay, go to this. Thank you, Joe, for the kind words. My name is Imranah. I'm from Khairazan University, Islamabad. I'm senior associate at ICTP. And ICTP is like my second home. So today I'm going to talk about some of the outreach activities and I did with the specially government college schools and primary school girls and what we did for education. So optics, the topic is optics outreach and gender equity in Pakistan. Before going into details of this topic, we would like to see where Pakistan stand in education. So Pakistan has the highest number of out of school children worldwide after Nigeria. That's not a good news. Nearly 22.5 million children are out of school. So Pakistan, according to the Oslo Summit 2015, Pakistan is among the worst performing countries in education. So below I took a table from world education services. They compiled this in 2020. According to their statistics, the elementary, which is the grade one to grade five, almost 18 million students get enrolled, but out of school is almost 5 million in primary education that is from grade one to grade five. Almost 21.3% of children are out of school. In middle school, that is grade six to grade eight, 6.3 million are enrolled in schools, but 6.5 million are out of school. So it is almost more than a 50% children are out of school in this age. Skendri or the higher school is from nine to 12th grade. 4.8 million are enrolled. And out of school is around 11.3, which are not registered in any school. So the percentage of out of school children is increasing that you can see is the 70%. But situation all along the Pakistan is not same. Like in I think many developing country, the literacy rate is higher in big cities, like in same is true for Pakistan, like in Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, the literacy rate is quite high and percentage of out of school children is quite low. According to the Pakistan constitution, the state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to 16 year. In such a manner as maybe determined by law. Government, different governments, political and our dictatorship regime striped their level best to increase the literacy rate of Pakistan. But sometimes they are not, even providing this free and compulsory education, they were not able to achieve a good number of educated students or children in Pakistan. If this is the situation in general, what about the girls education? Because so women are almost 49.2% of total population. There is a gender imbalance at all levels of education. The out of school rate for primary age girl is 32% compared to the 21% of boys. By grade six, 59% of girls versus 49% of boys are out of school. By grade nine, merely 30% of young women are still enrolled in school. And this again is not the uniform throughout the Pakistan. The largest province and the poorest province is Blochistan in Pakistan. Their Bochi girls, almost 78% are out of school. In Fata, which is now under the KBK, that is the Khabar Pakhtulfa, before it used to call the federal administrative derailment area. So there are 74% of girls which are out of school. Same another province in which 61% of girls are out of school. Gilgit-Burlistan is the northern area of Islamabad, Pakistan, which is very beautiful. But the education level is not very high. It is 53% of girls are out of school. In Azad Jamu-Peshmi, 52%, as you can see that I'm coming down. The number of out-of-school girls is improving a bit. In Khabar Pakhtulfa, which has a long border with Afghanistan and the novel laureate, Malala-Yusif Zayi belongs to that province. We have 51% of girls out of school. Punjab has a little bit better situation, but still it is not up to the mark. It's just in comparison to Blochistan, we have 40% of girls out of school. And in Islamabad capital territory, which is the federal area or the capital of Pakistan, Islamabad, we have only 11% of girls out of school. So this number is varying in remote areas, in ruler areas, the number of girls are not able to go to school. So what are the challenges for girls outside school? There is a poverty, families are poor, it is a developing country. Pandemic has a really bad effect on poor families. There were businesses were closed, labor were not able to get work. So that is a fundamental barrier for girls' education. Because even if education is free and compulsory, there are some hidden expenditures, like books, stationery, a uniform. Then the cost of transportation from one village to far away school, that is also high. Then there are some families that believe that girls should not be educated. Then they cannot be good wives, good mothers. They should stay inside home. Then there is a gender discrimination. In Asian society, male is considered the only breadwinner. So families prioritize voice education to ensure a better economic future for the family. And then girls from remote areas of countries are unable to attend school because they cannot afford the cost of transportation. There are, if they go to school by foot, there are, they face harassment, there are many incident. And then being a neighbor of Afghanistan in many provinces and even in capital, we suffered many suicide attacks in schools and as Taliban are totally against female education and we have this kind of influence in specially in Khairberg-Pakhtunkhwa. Then there are social norms that also varies from one family or one community to another community. So that also make hard for girls to have education. So what we can do? So the idea is how and where to start. So we decided to reach out to help government schools, colleges for girls, to provide them inquiry-based training to high school and college teachers. So if teachers are trained, they will communicate in a better way to their students. We decided to help students to actively contribute to the learning process, inquiry-based and active learning kind of hands-on activity, foster science as a force that can build up active citizen to emphasize the relationship between science skill and future employability. This point can also make clear to the families that if a girl will take education, she can teach or she can do some other work that will economic, better economic future of the family that she can contribute towards that. So we started, we established one self-funded group called Active Learning and Optics in January 2016 under the umbrella of the Salam International Center for Threatical Physics and Department of Physics at Thaydeasam University Islamabad. It is all the group members are volunteers and this group brings science, a lot of group brings physical sciences to underprivileged girls, schools, colleges and female university. It also provides an enriching science experience in a friendly atmosphere because usually set up in a school, even in colleges and university, students are shy to ask or to argue with the teacher. In that process, they don't learn much. Many outreach activities were organized to support and encourage girls students to pursue careers in science. On the left bottom, you can see a huge group of private school based in Islamabad, the Hork Grammar School. So we did an Optics Fair in 2018 in connection with International Day of Light. So we received a huge response from this school and we were not able to take a group photo so you can see that our photographer went on the first floor, roof of the first floor to take this screenshot. So the second image is from an activity in which Joe was also present. This activity we did in 2019, March 2019. This is the period when Pakistan was almost at war with India and over airspace was, most of the time was blocked. And we invited grade six and seven girls from our model school that is based on Khydeasam University campus. So why we decided to do Optics? Because the light is a very, you can explain very easily. You can see light and light based technology in every aspect of your life. So we decided and then United Nations designated 2015 as an International Year of Light and light based technology. So that's why we decided and then International Day of Light is celebrated on 16th of May each year, the anniversary of the first successful operation of the laser in 1960 by a physicist and in Virginia Theatre of America. So that's make us to do something in terms using light and light based technologies to students because optics is a fun. Optics and photonics, they can, you can explain many things using the light. And we did one, we celebrated in our university International Day of Light. We in connection with the LiDAR and we did an activity today, early morning. So I'll share the images with all of you. So what we usually do during these activities, we explain to them what is light. We explain whole spectrum of electromagnetic waves. Then we explain to them the different rules of light in our daily lives, like the use of laser light in medicine, in cutting, in brain finding, all these kinds depending upon the age of the group. So we do some magic tricks based on optical illusion. We explain laws of geometrical optics. And after doing hands-on activities, we experience that they don't forget these laws of optical optics. We do diffraction with single and double split interference, polarization of light. These are the few things listed over, but it's just a kind of momentum. I'm lucky to have kids from SPI. I'm lucky to have OSA suitcase. And then a Photonic Explorer kit. Thanks to Jonah Miller. We are using that. And I also have some American physical societies, kids six of spectra series number six and number seven. So here you can see this is an image from Fatma Janav women's university in Ravel Pinti. And I'm trying to explain the total internal reflection in a long glass tube. And you can see the image very clearly over here. So what we do for the younger girls, for younger girls, you cannot start from that, okay, this is monochromatic, this is the frequency range from this to this. So you have to go onto that level. So in this respect, we have experienced that the diffraction glasses from Optica and SPI helped us a lot. We have some small LED from SPI, then some lasers, and we have ordinary light. You can explain, ask them to put on these diffraction glasses. They can identify that where they can see a single color with laser. What are the LEDs? Not going into the details of how they are made or what is spontaneous emission and what is stimulated to emission. Then we do use gummy bears and we sort out M&Ms by using white light and color lights. We give them the concept of color, why mango is yellow, why blueberry is blue, by using toys, by we generate shadows. Then we show them the generation of white light and optical illusion. Usually they prefer to see the disappearing penny or the swapping of the arrow using half filled glass of water. So for senior girls, we start with the geometrical optics. We do the law of reflection, law of reflections, that is the SNL law. We ask them to find the critical angle. You can see there are girls that are trying to find the critical angle. They are using a laser diode from the photonic explorer gate. And then we explain from totally after doing the total internal reflection, we explain to the working principle of fiber optics because fiber optics can be used in communication. And now in Pakistan, most of the communication lines are based on fiber optics, at least in Islamabad. So these are again the reflection and the total internal reflection kind of thing. This is very, the top right is very famous for young girls as well as for the senior students. The stepping color by using these glass and in the left below, you can see these girls are calculating total internal reflection and calculating the critical angle of that plexiglass semi-circular dish. So giving them a difference of that, usually we all know that if we mix yellow color with blue, we get green. And if we mix red with yellow, we get orange. But in this experiment, they can see because of the reflection that blue plus yellow is not green because colors are swapped. And you can see that it is orange is there and the green is on the other side. So this is the generation of white light. You can see that there are different LEDs. We are using green, blue and red. And then we start overlapping and we explain them, this is the white light. And same time for the young girl, we say, okay, can you try, mix these color by using your coloring pencil? And what is the result? They said, oh, it is more darker. And then you can explain that that's how, what is the difference between these colored lights and those material particles? So this is for interference, we have these strips, which I got when we did active learning in optics and photonics at UNESCO project. So these are very good. They are made on a transparency. They are very precise in the wavelength. We have two for red, red light and two for blue. So by using these simple techniques, we can calculate the maxima and the minima of blue and red light. We can find the position of green wavelength on the intensity pattern. So this is again, how light travels, light travels in the straight line. Here we explain the scattering. My colleague, Professor Raheel, is putting some powder on laser pointer. And this eliminates the path of laser and it shows that it is traveling in the straight line. And also from here, we take them to why sky is blue and why sky is orange-ish red at dawn and dusk. Okay, so for senior girls, we also do diffraction with a single slit, double slit. We explain the interference. We do diffraction from obstacle, light to pinhole, spring wire, human hair and curved obstacle. These girls are also from the Phakma Janak Women's University. This is from the polarizer. We have these polarizers from Photonic Explorer Kit. You can see if you can see it, from Photonic Explorer Kit, you can see if you are using the two polarizer, having perpendicular exit, you can block the total intensity coming from the screen. Here the intensity is reduced to half and also in these two photos. We can, we also explain to them if you are using eyeglasses, we ask them to put their eyeglasses in between two polarizers to see the stress and different kinds of strains and that glass or a plastic table spoon or a fork. So how many activities we have done so far? Most of the time, you know, that we are not keeping a good track. When we are doing activities, some main issue is there is no one to take a decent kind of screenshots or photos. Most of these photos are mobile click or when Joe was there, he took very nice photos. So we did 40 outreach activities only for girls, female, girls school, colleges and universities. And as I'm teaching at Kaidiazum University, which is co-education. So most of the time, our undergraduate boys were complaining about that I'm too much inclined towards female education. So we did 10 optics outreach activity with our own undergraduate students and some private school because mostly private school are in co-education, but not these model school. They are mostly for, there are many schools for girls alone. And so this activity we did in 2019, you can identify it is not very good image that Professor Joe Damela is standing there, ICTP Deputy Director, Professor Sandro Schendler was there, George Thompson was there. And these are those girls from grade six and seven of our model school that is located on Kaidiazum, near Kaidiazum University. This low images, we did this activity last month on 25th of April. These are girls from primary model school from Islamabad. And there were grade four and five girls. And when we reached there, there were 74 girls. And you can see, and they wanted to learn, they wanted to interact, they wanted to grab the optics we took with us to explain these kind of things. So it was fun. For high school, you can see these two images on left are from a private school. And this top on left is a very famous private school, very expensive. But unfortunately, they don't have laboratories. What they do for O level and A level, they take a subject that is called alternate to practical. My daughter studied from the same school. So I know the problems. Otherwise for me, I prefer government school. They have a lack of funding. These school have lack of honesty. Their owners have lack of honesty because they don't spend money on experiments. They prefer to take alternate to practical course. So these are O levels and A level student because one of my ex student is a teacher there. So she invited us and this activity we did in April. So we explained to them some optics phenomena. And that was the first time they touched some optics or lasers and these kinds of things. Right. And then we did many activities for undergraduate students. And here you can see there are some boys because these are our own undergraduate students from Kaisen University. We did many activities with female university. On the top right, you can see this is from a women's university in Mardhan. Mardhan is a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. So I took this photo in a sense to explain to you. We distributed the certificate among them, the organizers and others. And you can see that some of the girls are hiding their faces behind this certificate. So if you have such kind of restriction, it is hard to go for higher education and things, but still we were very impressed with how they were trying to understand different phenomena and how they are interacting with us. On the top left, we visited an international Islamic university that is funded by Saudi Arabia. But unfortunately this university female campus don't have a laboratory. So we did one hands-on, one day of optics activity with the female campus of International Islamic University. So this is also from the bottom picture is from a university of Hwa. It used to be a girls college. Now it is a co-education university. Hwa is the city at the border of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. And its literacy rate in Pakistan is 100%. And the day we visited them, the total strength of the department is 350. 200 are girls and 150 are boys. So the head of department closed the whole department in order that everybody will attend our activity. So it was a very nice day we spent with them and truthful day for us and for them. So these are the in-person activities we did during pandemic. So of course there were many risk involved, not for me because I like to take risks but for my student, Abdul Rahman, he's always with me for many activities. The top left is in University of Swabi. We did in October 2020. I'm not sure because I never see any other in-person optics activity in 2020. This was, I think, we are the only one or we are among the few who did in-person hands-on activity during the 2020. The top right is we did hands-on activity with the girls. These are in grade 10. And they were going to have exam after this activity because this school was closed for one year. So these girls lost the knowledge or the teaching or studying of one year because their parents cannot afford smartphones. They don't have the iPads or televisions or computers at home. Their teachers don't have Wi-Fi connection all the time. So they were not lucky enough to have online classes. So it was a nice day with them. But of course, one day activity cannot compensate for a year of knowledge, but we are happy that we bring some happiness to them through our optics activity. The top, the below left is Sir Syed's school in Wakand, where literacy rate is too high. 150 girls attended this activity and 150 boys also attended the initial my lecture and also the initial demonstration. But we didn't have so many kids that we accommodated those boys, but we promise that we will visit for them sometime again. So this is also Islamic University, female campus that we visited after the fourth wave. When fourth lockdown, there was a small window last December in December, 2021. We visited this during pandemic. So, but these four activities according to me during lockdown and because of the pandemics were not enough. So we decided to do some online teaching and lectures for our undergrad students and graduate students. So we decided need to reach out masses together. So we gather our academia and help and other alumni from ICTP, Pakistan ICTP alumni. So we founded an alumni society under the name Pakistan ICTP Alumni Society. We inaugurated it in January, 2021. And now this society is almost one year old. So far we are done with 20 online lectures by distinguished scientists. And we also did a couple of series like Steven Weinberg lecture series of the Salam lecture series. But these lectures were for undergraduate students, not for the government school girls schools or primary schools. So they are a bit advanced level. So we did these online for some senior students. Then we also did some about female education. The top left is International Day of Women and Girls in Science, 2021. We did it on 11th February. Many girls around the world contributed their point of view. Then on the top right, you can see Professor Maria Yusuf and Professor Anna Koncepthini. We invited them on International Day of Women and Girls, 2022 to share their experience with the young girls of Pakistan and in the region. And active learning in optics and Pakistan ICTP alumni society also organized a unique event to celebrate International Day of Light 2021 and also to highlight importance of female education. We invited a celebrity who is a pop singer, Iron Harun Rashid, who produced Pakistan first full-length 3D animated series under the title Burqa Avenger. So to emphasize the importance of girl education. So from all these online and outreach activities, we have learned especially from the outreach activities because they were interactive. Topics should be selected according to the theoretical background of students. The activities should be according to the age of students, which must start give an introductory talk for a session explaining aims of hands-on activity and students should be encouraged to make the predictions and ask questions. Usually in the beginning of each activity, we should, we especially I crack some jokes, I try to make them relaxed and then they are fun to be with. So there should not be any mathematical equations are involved. So what we hope, of course you can, there is no restriction on hoping. So these girls will continue in science. And one day may do outreach themselves and be a role model for a new group of girls. Be better informed citizen, capable of making decision for the betterment of everyone. What being a, I studied in Pakistan, I lived here. So I experienced many things in my times when we were living in a city, but there were no labs in my college. So we used to go to a voice college to perform experiment. So remembering my experience and how time was and after 30 years, nothing has changed. So being a woman, being a daughter and later a daughter-in-law, being a wife, being a mother of young girl, especially in Asian culture, where having an educated male here is greater source of pride to a mother than a daughter with an advanced degree. Knowing how female children have been treated in remote areas of my beautiful country makes me want to do so much more. What I feel is that Pakistan, it's always, I feel very happy to make them happy. So Pakistan, these girls really do embed light. I should not say, but with my experience, I realized that girls in Pakistan are more brighter than boys. Their faces transmit a positive energy that says clearly we are your future, take care of us and we will take care of you as good citizen, as mothers, as good teachers, as productive member of an enlightened society where culture and tradition don't have to be in conflict with the realization of potential of young girls. So what I believe many boys or male don't agree with this. If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate whole family, your next generation. So these are the images you can see the smile on these girls. This girl is using homemade spectroscope and these images from female campus in International Islamic University. So what about our future moves? The active learning in optics group is planning to establish a regular calendar of outreach hands-on activity optics. For example, for this year as the COVID situation is much better in Pakistan, we managed to do almost six activities in the past few months. So mostly we do with the school and colleges in Twin City of Islamabad and Ravel Pinti, but from 2019, we extended these activity to Khabar Bakhtun Park. And we've been to two universities, the University of Murdan and University of Swabi. But then 2020, it was a lockdown and many other issues. We want to extend the limit of these activities to the remote areas of Pakistan and eventually make it a regional activity. And we want to take a law that is active learning in optics to Alps, which is active learning in physical sciences. So how you can reach us? There are two Facebook pages, in fact, three Facebook pages. One is on the title, Optics Workshop. You can find the details of all hands-on optics activities starting from 2016. Then we have a Facebook with the new ICTP Alumni Society. You can find recording of all those lectures I mentioned. And then Pakistan is now a new territory of International Commission of Optics. We have a Facebook page for that. I added a Dropbox link that you can check all the image, because it was not possible to add all the images, all the group photos. So we added few, but you can please kindly feel free to use. And these are my volunteers to Professor Rahil, Professor at Khydeasam University, Professor Jahan Akbar, he's from Hazara University in Mansira, KBK. And soon to be Dr. Abdul Rehman, he's my PhD student, and he has submitted his thesis. And soon, inshallah, he will be this. Okay, thank you.