WWF Pakistan has been conducting a nation-wide environment spelling competition in Schools for the past 15 years under the nationally recognized name of ‘Spellathon’,. A small test run was first conducted in 1996 registering around 25,000 students, and now we are very grateful to say that the number of students participating in Spellathon has increased to
1, 25,000 across Pakistan. This could not have been attainable without the enthusiastic response from schools who have been participating in Spellathon for the last many years and have made Spellathon an essential part of their yearly activity calendar. The success of spellathon is also associated with the valuable support from the corporate world which has been sponsoring the event to spread environmental awareness among young minds of our nation. The activity for the year 2011 commenced in February 2011 and continued till end of May 2011.
It is critical to note that it is the generous and continuous support of leading corporate partners that WWF - Pakistan has been able to raise the quality and scale of the activity to better standard each proceeding year. The number of participating students touched the new height of 1, 25,000 including 20,000 students of under privileged public schools.
Living up to the decades old commitment and a long history of collaboration with WWF - P in various projects, this year again Rose Petal and P&G took the lead in contributing the environmental education driven campaign of Spellathon by taking the responsibility to educate 20,000,15,000 and 10,000 students respectively across Pakistan and enhanced their insight on environment and related biodiversity issues.
A set of nine carefully crafted, innovative, colourful and child friendly compendiums are designed and compiled to be utilised by students from Grades one to nine. The booklets collectively contain a vast wealth of information, word games, puzzles, exercises and points to ponder about ecology in general and environmental conservation in particular.
Designed to take a student on a developmental voyage of scientific discovery the booklets ease a child into understanding that there exists different animals, that these animals exist in different environments, that these environments are often integrated or at least over lapping and then examines specific aspects of environmental conservation and associated bio diversity such as turtles, Blind Indus Dolphins, Cranes of Pakistan etc.
The booklets also examine the inter connectivity of species, their environment, Human impact, values and benefits and natural resources of Pakistan.
To enhance children’s interest and to make the content more attractive and fascinating special graphics were used to make these booklets colorful and eye-catching.
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The activity started with the registration of schools and enrollment of students in spellathon. Spellathon booklets were dispatched to schools as per the number of students enrolled. Teachers handed over the booklets to the students and a time of 4-6 weeks was given for preparation. During this time students also looked for the sponsor who could be any family member or friend. Such sponsor would be awarding Rs.5 for each correct spelling to the student. After the lapse of the preparation time teachers conducted the test, marked it, collected the donation from the students and sent the results to WWF – P. Against the result sheets the gifts were packed and dispatched to the schools. Gifts were distributed among the students by the teachers.
WWF Pakistan’s Spellathon 2010 remained a huge success on account of the tremendous and enthusiastic participation of the students of all the age groups from grade I to grade IX across Pakistan. The overwhelming participation of 1,25,000 children proved that children are fond of WWF-Pakistan’s spellathon and schools acknowledge the strength and far reaching environmental education impacts on the young minds of our nation. Children took part in the competition and related activities devotedly and contributed to the holy cause of nature conservation overwhelmingly.
With the help of generous support of Corporate Partners, immensely exciting and colorful gifts were being developed to award the children for their contribution to nature conservation and protection through Spellathon.
To enhance public, school and corporate outreach careful, meaningful and focused media coverage was planned and executed. A three year agreement with Geo Tv has been finalized to cover all the events of spellathon across country. It would definitely give rise to the sponsoring companies in a direct manner.
Benefits to Sponsors
1. A full (1/2 A-4 Size) page promotional space for the sponsor‘s message on the back of SPELLATHON booklets as well as the inner back page.
2. Promotional space on the cover of SPELLATHON booklets.
3. SPELLATHON provides the sponsor with a direct access to the children for free sampling of the product.
4. SPELLATHON enables the sponsors to highlight a clear and extremely visible message to all the audience exposed to this activity.
5. Individuals remain exposed to the published material for at least four weeks. Since most of the students also collected the information levels the contact period for the brand increases manifold.
6. Participating students share the SPELLATHON folders and levels with their friends at school and otherwise thereby enhancing the exposure for the sponsor.
WWF – Pakistan took the lead in providing the underprivileged public school students with the rare opportunity of taking part in creative spelling activity considering them an equally important segment of the nation. Content was being translated in to urdu to make it comprehendible for the students.In the spellathon content booklets extra pages were being inserted based on the importance of cleanliness to educate these children the significance of hygiene. PARCO joined hands with WWF –Pakistan and covered the expenses of Spellathon among 10,000 public school students in April 2010.