NUML Digital Skills Society - Insight to Action

A Small Step In Good Direction!

The first day of a semester is about exchanging new visions. On the 27^th of September 2021, we were asked to define the change in our first class of the day. It took a couple of minutes to restructure words to sound concrete. The first thing that knocked our mind was the words of Mahatma Gandhi,

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."

Considering the social changes happening around us we identified the most important issue and proposed solutions to it. Social Action Project is an ultimate course of knowledge transfer incorporating planning, leading, executing, budgeting, and documenting the nitty-gritty of the project. Including long hours of brainstorming and group discussions, it was not difficult for the six brains to concede at the topic because pandemic elevated the dire need for digital skills in the creative economy and the team members along with polishing their competencies thought to engage others as well.

NUML Digital Skills Society aims to empower youth through the development of digital skills and digital literacy in Higher Education Institutions building a sustainable digital ecosystem under SDG-4 and SDG-8.

Our strenuous efforts of four months did not go stale. It’s the time of celebration. Instead of feeling a burden, Team NUML Digital Skills Society is feeling proud of its achievements which have miraculously transformed us into more responsible and flexible human beings. The whole team pays high gratitude to the most generous supervisor ever, Dr. Athar Rashid for his constant guidance and motivation to achieve our objectives. Social Action Project was an innovative learning experience for the whole team not only improving our social and communication skills but also enhancing our problem solving and leadership attributes. The high levels of stress and anxiety diminished with every step forward towards the goals. Team NUML Digital Skills Society truly believe in the words of Nelson Mandela,

"It always seems impossible until it's done."

By far, positive feedback outnumbered the negative adding delicacy to the team and elevating the impact of the project by making it sustainable through adding more courses, meeting potential stakeholders, recruiting efficient human resources, and much more!  Charles F. Glassman explains the heartfelt feelings of the team,

"Despite our challenges, hope lies in the reality that our story does not end here."

A glance into the final presentation of NUML Digital Skills Society held on 27th Jan 2022.

Regards,

Team NUML Digital Skills Society

Activity: Online survey.

Whenever we want to collect data we go for sampling and for this project we do want some relevant data from different age groups, due to covid19 we are not able to collect it by visiting, to gather people so we go for online surveys and asked few questions about cyber education, cyber security, and cybercrime. and most of the people give us responses and share their thoughts with us that they think about these phrases and how can they prevent their selves from this. The first online survey was in the form of a questionnaire and the other was essay writing. We receive 15 responses on essay writing activity and from school going students to university level students write a very comparative and understandable essay.

it was a very brainstorming activity for the students and we also got good work from them too. 

By: MEHREEN SAJJAD- GROUP LEADER & CONTENT WRITER.

Activity: Webinar2 with T.A. Bhutta and Mubeen Ashraf.

This webinar was different from the earlier one as it focused on the cognitive health of children due to poverty along with illiteracy and its lack of knowledge about cyber education. 

my opinion is that, the base of every crime is connected to something and may be it comes from house hold or parenting, so it is very important to guild children from the young age. so how can we guide them specially to parents about its important we held this specific webinar. and we just not covered this topic but few other as well. 

In this webinar there were 45+ participants and it was continued almost 1 and half hour. This was second and most effective too because it was a brainstorming webinar a lot of students asked question questions about crypto and bit coins , gray hackers, and  financial fraud. We got good outcomes.

Activity: Webinar1 with Advocate Zain Ali Qureshi.

As we cannot meet everyone personally and this internet made our lives easy, we can communicate with anyone easily, so we've decided to make some informative talk with different people on different topics.

as cyber education is important and what are the consequence of it misuse and what are punishments for different cybercrimes for this we held a webinar with advocate Zain, and 30+ people join that webinar and it continued for 45 minutes. 

The reason to conduct this webinar was to create a direct interaction between students and someone who knows who knows all the afterword consequence of cybercrime and the students/audience asked a lot of relevant questions and got their answers as well.

 

By: MEHREEN SAJJAD- GROUP LEADER & CONTENT WRITER.

Activity: meeting with DG Muhammad Suhail Khan (sp&cs) of NITB Islamabad.

As I told you in my previous blog when we want to talk about some topic we should collect all the relevant data and information, correct information. This is the only way from which we can aware people of the consequences and importance. We have not just met SHO Mian Irfan but also one of the most experienced people who are non-other Director-General Muhammad Suhail Khan (SP&CS) NITB Islamabad. After talking and asking him questions we found that we really know just the basics and our research is so minor and little because he is working in this field for more than 20+ years and he knows a lot of things about cyber, hacking, the dark web, child pornography, leaked information, editing and a lot of other crimes which sometimes the culprit don’t even know that what’s going to happen next. He concluded that we can just spread information and aware people of the bad side of the internet. But guys you know what else he said he told us that whenever you learned something extra you try to implement it, and yes it can be in a positive manner but it does have some negative impact as well. We asked him that can education be a tool which we can use against cyber-crime… and he simply said NO, then we questioned him why the answer is NO and he really made his point all clear to us that we can’t even digest it but sometimes we have to take bitter sips well, he answered us that most of the things are done by educated people and they try or they really hack the system, some of them are working in the dark web, unethically as well, and he said that he didn’t mean that we should stop educating our selves but we should follow some rules, regulations, value and in an ethical manner without hurting anybody.

Last but not the least, it was a very much brainstorming and effected meeting and we really do learn a lot than we thought. DG Suhail Khan appreciated us as well, and you know what??? He offered us to do an internship under his supervision which is more than an achievement and a great success of this meeting.

Activity: meeting with SHO Mian Irfan Cyber Wing Islamabad.

I think not everyone is fully educated and not everyone is fully illiterate, in this world everyone have some level of education and information and we or our project is based on a practical learning system and we came out to inform other students and aware them that the cyber education is important. So for this purpose, we have to educate ourselves self-first and then we decided to meet some people who have a strong grip, who are well experienced and who have full command of this subject. 

Firstly, we FIA cyber wing Islamabad and had a meeting with SHO Mian Irfan, this meeting and interview were very effective and we learned a lot from him he tells us that the umbrella of cyber is very vast a lot of things a lot of scams do come under this word not just specifically harassment because whenever we heard that word the first thing which comes in our mind is this… but this is not it..!! a lot of people are involved in cyber-crime as we are living in the 21^st century and the internet, artificial intelligence are increasing day by day yes they do make our life easy but difficult too on the same time, people are doing a number of wrong and unethical things by the help of these resources, which cause a lot of damage especially to the young generation, as we used to use these social media accounts more than others. Before meeting him we had a lot of questions and quarries but after having a meeting and interview most of the doubts and assumptions got cleared. And SHO Mian Irfan appreciated our work and wish us good luck as well. I and my team really want to thank him for giving us his precious time and for forwarding his worth full information with us.

By: MEHREEN SAJJAD- GROUP LEADER & CONTENT WRITER.

Activity: visit to universities.

Our next step was to visit different universities to conduct interviews and for awareness about their (students) think that why we should know about cyber security and is there any policy in their university on cyber? So to get the answers to these questions we went to four different universities and they are; Foundation Rawalpindi campus, Air Islamabad campus, Bahria Islamabad campus, and NUML Islamabad campus.

After sum off all the mentioned universities, we found that in these universities there are cyber policy which is actively working in the favor of students if they are facing; harassment, hacking, bullying. Students to have a lot of information and knowledge about this phrase ‘cyber security and want to know more about it the curiosity in the young generation to know much more about is huge and they wants to know that why some people do such things and misuses their capabilities and tries hurt others directly or indirectly. A student shares a story with us that his PUBG game was hacked by an anonymous person and that game was linked by Facebook which means his Facebook got hacked and all his information and other stuff too and when we asked that who it happened he said that he was trying to purchase some royal pass online which offered 30% off, which means that he was a victim financial fraud seems funny but yes it is just one small story who knows how many stories are under-covered.  Moving forward, the thing which we found from all these visits to different universities is that, students should know about the importance of cyber education and if there are some flaws then their teachers should guide them in the best way.  

 

  

Activity: poster pasting.

Poster pasting is a kind of advertisement and yes we have done this activity in NUML university's main campus Islamabad, the main reason was to gain much more attention and to attract students towards this sensitive and neglected topic. We have pasted these posters almost in 4 departments and after the pasting, we just not got students' attention but some of the students do follow our social media accounts too. Overall it was a good step that we posted some of our posters inside the university and had students' attention and attraction as well.

By: MEHREEN SAJJAD- GROUP LEADER & CONTENT WRITER

Activity: social media account.

Starting from the 1^st activity which was to make social media accounts, this step was important to be done because social media platforms are used by almost everyone and we can easily share our thoughts and information there. So, we made an Instagram account and Facebook as well. The motive was to gain attention on this sensitive topic which is somehow neglected by us I mean by the young generation, and we usually don’t bother it that how dangerous it can be. And yes! We found it very successful as many people followed our account and share them as well, and we try to solve their queries if they are having any kind of problem regarding cyber-crime they can tell us or ask us. And our future plan is to make them more effective and active because we all know that we are so much lazy to read stuff in newspapers and we mostly prefer to sit at one place and scroll our mobile and use Instagram and Facebook like apps, so from here the awareness and information can easily run and have a long-lasting impact too. You can follow our account.

  

By: MEHREEN SAJJAD-GROUP LEADER&CONTENT WRITER.              

Journey of SAP-Numl EV Club

Done and Dusted!!

Yes! Finally we are overwhelmed by the fact that we have successfully completed our Social Action Project.

 This is not a goodbye, perhaps it’s the beginning of a new journey

Here we are done with our half degree, so as with our social action projects. Whenever you complete a task of any size or importance, you feel a surge of energy and enthusiasm and self-esteem. The more important the completed task, the happier, more confident and more powerful you feel about yourself and your world. Same goes for us, I feel really good as it was the milestone, we wanted to check off. But we still have a lot more to accomplish. I am just glad, to say that our social action project, Numl EV Club, under the supervision of our respected Professor Dr. Athar Rashid enabled us to compete and win at all stages. It was not possible without the constant guide from our mentor.

The department of Governance and Public Policy provided us the greatest learning opportunity with the practical exposure of the degree. The social action project didn’t only help us in knowing and getting knowledge of our topic alone, rather it helped us in knowing the other social issues too. Different projects of our semester like cyber security, digital skills, environmental parliament, and water wise also transformed our way of thinking and knowledge, which was the best part of our learning experience. The SAP was a wonderful experience of my whole academic life.         

The challenges and hurdles aside, this social action project enhanced our bunch of skills like communication and writing skills, problem-solving, decision making, time management and most importantly team work skills. As a project manager, I would ensure the successful sustainability of our project in the future InshaALLAH. We have already made a one year sustainable plan and will be working on its successful implementation.

SER.NO

TASK NAME

START

FINISHED

DURATION

YEAR 2022

MONTH

APR

MAY

JUN

JUL

AUG

SEP

OCT

NOV

DEC

1

WALL PAINTING WITH NEECA COLLABORATION

1/4/2022

24/4/2022

3 WEEKS 2 DAYS

2

ACTIVITY WITH JOLTA

26/4/2022

10/5/2022

2 WEEKS

3

SUNDAY CYCLING RALY

11/5/2022

15/5/2022

5 DAYS

4

AWARENESS CAMPAIGN IN COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS

17/5/2022

10/6/2022

ALMOT3 WEEKS

5

VISIT ENG.NAZIR TANOLI PLANT AT WAHCANT

12/6/2022

15/6/2022

4 DAYS

6

MEETING WITH NUML  RECTOR

17/6/2022

25/6/2022

1 WEEK

7

SUMMER VACATION( USE SOCIAL MEDFA FOR AWARNESS)

1/7/2022

30/8/2022

ALMOST 2 MONTHS

8

VISIT PETROLEUM AND HEALTH DEPERTMENT

2/9/2022

18/9/2022

3 WEEKS

9

WEBINAR  WITH VOLUNTEERS ABOUT PROGRESS

19/9/2022

21/9/2022

1 DAYS

10

WEBINAR  WITH SAMMAR KHAN

22/9/2022

27/9/2022

4 DAYS

11

CHINNA EMBASSY VISITED

1/10/2022

7/10/2022

1 WEEK

12

AWARNESS WALK WITH VOLUNTERS OUTSIDE NUML

8/10/2022

15/10/2022

1 WEEK

13

VISIT CLIMATE CHANGE DEPRTMENT

17/10/2022

25/10/2022

1 WEEK

13

VISIT AND COOLABARATION WORK WITH SOLLAR PANNELS  SHOPS

2/11/2022

18/11/2022

3 WEEKS

14

VISIT THE CHARGING STATION OF MOTORWAY

20/11/2022

29/11/2022

1 WEEK 2 DAYS

15

MEETING WITH DEAN OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

2/12/2022

5/12/2022

3 DAYS

16

ARRANGE EV BIKES FOR MAIN MEMBERS

7/12/2022

25/12/2022

ALMOST 3 WEEKS