Mahjabeen Alvina, Biomedical Engineer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Umeed Labs, Educational Director at Pro AI Global, and Member of the FPCCI Education Reforms Committee, has launched what is being described as Karachi’s first Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship Program specifically designed for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18. The programme runs for six months, meets once a week on-site in Karachi, and is limited to a small batch of participants to ensure the quality of engagement that the learning format requires. The fee is PKR 10,000 per month and interested families can register at forms.gle/RWUKt8fgdp6YMZ7m8 or reach out directly at 0333-3543441 for further information.
The programme is built around a conviction that the skills most consequential for success in an artificial intelligence-driven economy are not the ones most schools are currently teaching. While conventional schooling in Pakistan continues to prioritise memorisation and examination performance, the capabilities that will determine whether a young person can think independently, solve novel problems, build something of value, and communicate their ideas persuasively are the ones that most formal curricula leave largely unaddressed. Mahjabeen Alvina designed this programme specifically because she observed smart, capable teenagers becoming increasingly dependent thinkers in an educational environment that rewards recall over reasoning, and built the curriculum as a direct response to that pattern. The programme brings to teenagers the same innovation and entrepreneurship frameworks that are typically only encountered at the university level, adapting them for ambitious secondary school students who are ready to engage with real-world complexity before they have been funnelled into the narrow academic tracks that most of their peers follow.
The curriculum covers five core areas across the six-month programme. Design Thinking gives students the methodology to approach problems from the perspective of the people experiencing them, building the empathy, observation, and iterative prototyping skills that are foundational to both entrepreneurship and effective problem solving in any domain. Startup idea development takes students through the process of identifying a real problem, building a concept around it, and stress-testing their assumptions against market reality, giving them a practical introduction to what building a business actually involves. Critical thinking and communication skills development addresses the personal and intellectual capabilities that underpin every other aspect of the programme, equipping teenagers with the ability to examine arguments, identify assumptions, and express their thinking clearly and persuasively across different contexts and audiences. Real-world problem solving grounds the programme in the kind of authentic challenge that produces genuine learning rather than the artificial exercises that most school assignments involve. The culminating experience of pitching to a live judging panel gives students the high-stakes practice of presenting their ideas under real evaluative scrutiny, building the confidence and communication skills that will serve them in every subsequent professional and entrepreneurial context.
Mahjabeen Alvina’s background as a biomedical engineer who has built a technology and education venture gives the programme a trainer whose credibility comes from having done the work of building and leading an organisation, not just from having studied entrepreneurship academically. Her involvement with the FPCCI Education Reforms Committee connects the programme to the broader policy conversation about what Pakistan’s education system needs to produce in order to develop the talent base a competitive 21st century economy requires, and her role at Pro AI Global adds the artificial intelligence literacy dimension that makes the programme particularly relevant to the technological context in which its teenage participants will be building their careers and ventures. For parents and students in Karachi who are looking for a programme that takes young people seriously as thinkers and builders rather than treating them as passive recipients of instruction, the Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship Program represents a genuinely differentiated option. Registration is open at forms.gle/RWUKt8fgdp6YMZ7m8 and seats are limited.
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