A set of ten carefully crafted, innovative, colourful and child friendly wetland compendiums have been compiled by Marriyum Aurangzeb and Fakhar from Awareness-raising and Communications section of Pakistan Wetlands Programme.

Known by the nationally recognised name as of ‘Spellathon' the booklets are designed to be utilised by students from Grades one to ten the booklets collectively contain a vast wealth of information, word games, puzzles, exercises and points to ponder about wetlands in particular and ecology in general.

Originally published in English to establish the correct scientific terminology the booklets have now been translated into Urdu. Taken together both the English and Urdu versions will provide correct terminology for the subject matter in both languages and will serve as valuable tools and mutually beneficial and cross-over instructive materials.

Designed to take a student on an 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 wetlands and associated bio diversity such turtles, Blind Indus Dolphins, Cranes of Pakistan.

The booklets also examine the inter connectivity of species, their environment, Human impact, values and benefits, Wetlands of Pakistan, Pakistan Wetlands Programme.

Marriyum and Fakhar worked tirelessly to create informative, cogent, illuminating and illustrative text and pictures which they devised themselves drawing from their in depth knowledge of the subject matter. Additional design concepts and their execution wwas provided by Hassan Zaki and WWF Head Office in Lahore . Photographs have been provided by the international renowned Pakistani Wildlife and environmental photographer, who from his base at WWF Lahore travels throughout Pakistan

For the 20 years, the WWF Pakistan, the implementing agency of the PWP has been involved in the creation of children student directed booklets. This however is the first time that the PWP has created their own set of booklets focusing exclusively on Wetlands dynamics.

Since their publication in March 110 schools representing 43000 students have befitted from the information exercises and over all fun that the booklets contained.

One aspect of the wetlands booklet is the quote S pellathon in which each school enrolls to the spelling competition and the booklets are given to the registered student who then prepare for a booklet based spelling competition while at the same time learning about wetlands.

Spellathon , which is essentially a spelling test and designed in such a way that every age group within a school is provided with information suitable to its level of understanding. A fifty question test prepared by WWF Pakistan is given to teachers participatory teachers and these in turn are administered to the registered students. Prizes and souvenirs are given for most accurate responses.

So far the spellathon is just within each individual school but plans are possible for this to be widened into competitions between area schools and among provincial schools perhaps with the end result of their being a national competition base on these booklets sometime in the future.

Any school or even individual student can receive some or all of the booklets simply by contacting the PWP at maurangzeb@wwf.org.pk and requesting them with your contact details.

An online version of the complete booklet series is being devised for both the English and Urdu language mediums. Details of this will become available as soon as possible.