Town Halls

What they are

Town Halls are one of PCE's most effective grassroots strategies, and the backbone of its community engagement. Held district by district with local partner organisations, they bring families, teachers, students, and community leaders face to face with the people who answer to them: school authorities, elected representatives (MPAs, MNAs, and district authorities), CEOs of Education, and district administrators. Convened under the banner of the national Education Emergency, each town hall opens a space to discuss the real state of education and the urgency of the crisis, and turns what communities demand into commitments that officials make on the record.

How they work

The mechanism is consistent across districts. PCE, in partnership with member organisation, Pakistan Youth Change Advocates (PYCA), links community voices directly to their elected representatives, who hear the concerns and pledge both to act on them and to raise them in the assemblies. On the sidelines, Focus Group Discussions are held with female community representatives and girls, often left out of mainstream forums, to surface their specific concerns. The key takeaways, demands, and pledges are then documented into a formal pledge undertaking for each district, which the participating representatives sign to attest to their commitments, and PCE stays engaged afterwards to track progress and hold them to account.

What they have achieved

Through these engagements, PCE has strengthened citizen and state dialogue, elevated grassroots concerns to policy platforms, highlighted the implementation gaps in Article 25-A, and secured official commitments toward inclusive, quality education. The willingness of CEOs of Education, elected officials, and district administrators to sit down and respond to communities' demands has shown a renewed commitment to accountability and local problem-solving, and PCE continues to follow up to ensure those commitments become real improvements on the ground.

Featured: From a town hall request to a working library in Dhok Hassu

Some of the strongest outcomes start as a single request. At one of the town halls, students spoke up about something their school was missing: a functional library. The CEO Education, Rawalpindi, took the idea forward and asked PCE to help make it real. In response, PCE with PYCA ran a book donation drive to fill the shelves, and the result was a new, working community library at Government Girls Secondary School Dhok Hassu, Rawalpindi, opened with the CEO Education. It is one of the clearest examples of what these town halls are for: a need voiced by students in one room, turned into a lasting change in their school.

Town halls held

• Jhelum 

• Peshawar 

• Faisalabad 

• Gujar Khan

• Murree 

• Multan 

• Muzaffargarh 

• Lahore

• DI Khan

• Attock