Islamabad: TAYAR (Training Adolescents and Youth for Action and Resilience) launched a new programme on International Youth Day 2026 to strengthen youth-led disaster risk reduction, preparedness and resilience across Pakistan.
The event brought together key stakeholders including the Prime Minister’s Youth Programme (PMYP), National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Higher Education Commission (HEC), National Disaster Risk Management Fund (NDRMF), Pakistan Girl Guides Association (PGGA), Pakistan Boy Scouts Association (PBSA), School of Leadership Foundation (SoLF), and youth representatives to explore how young people could play a more structured and meaningful role in building resilient communities.
Under the theme ‘Different Contexts, Common Aspirations,’ the programme highlighted the importance of connecting initiatives, including TAYAR, the National Volunteer Corps, and specialised disaster risk reduction and management badges, within a coordinated national framework.
Discussions focused on equipping youth with practical life skills, crisis preparedness, volunteerism, and community leadership. A key milestone of the launch was the introduction of the National Standardized Disaster Risk Reduction Manual for Volunteers, which provides a practical framework for developing university students, faculty members, and youth leaders as Master Trainers.
The approach will enable trained youth to cascade essential disaster preparedness and risk reduction knowledge to fellow students, schools, and communities.
The launch event also featured the first Training of GYM Focal Persons, Captains and Vice Captains, equipping 41 participants with knowledge of Pakistan’s disaster risk reduction framework, national DRR governance, digital early warning systems and anticipatory action.
This inaugural bootcamp would be followed by nine additional bootcamps in the coming months, extending the training to
all 137 partner universities nationwide.
Trained participants would be registered as members of the Prime Minister’s National Volunteers Corps (NVC) and, through campus DRR societies and the cascade learning model, would go on to reach an estimated 28,000 young people across the country, carrying knowledge and action from training spaces into schools, communities, and GYM Clubs.
Speaking at the launch event, Chairman, Prime Minister’s Youth Programme, Rana Mashhood Ahmad Khan, highlighted the importance of empowering young people as active partners in national development, community resilience and public service.
Chairman, NDMA Lt. General Inam Haider Malik, underscored the importance of community preparedness in strengthening Pakistan’s disaster resilience and highlighted the need to equip young people with practical knowledge and skills to support disaster preparedness and response across the country.
UNICEF Representative,Pernille Ironside, emphasized TAYAR’s role in bringing together young people, government, academia, communities and development partners to empower adolescents and youth as partners and leaders in resilience and sustainable development.
The event also featured screenings of the TAYAR and Prime Minister’s Digital Youth Hub videos, followed by the signing of a Letter of Understanding between NDMA and PMYP, reinforcing institutional collaboration around youth engagement, volunteerism and disaster resilience.
