Festivals are social celebrations, encouraging us to reach out to others, create new or consolidate existing bonds and celebrate joy collectively. We believe this objective should be furthered to form a bond between India and Pakistan.

Aaghaz-e-Dosti facilitates exchange of greeting cards between Indian and Pakistani schools on important days and festivals like Independence day, New year and other festivals. Independence Day is especially a time of jingoism and so the objective is to send message of peace. Cards are also exchanged to express solidarity when any tragedy happens across the border.

“Indo-Pak Pen Pals” is a letter exchange program between students of schools in India and Pakistan. The aim of the program is to facilitate one to one contact between Indian & Pakistani school students under the supervision of trained educators.

In this initiative, a series of letters are shared among randomly paired students from both the countries. Through the dialogue, the students are encouraged to look beyond the obvious and question stereotypes in order to promote critical thinking.