I have undying faith in the power of humanity to effect positive change, and herald peace, inclusiveness, and justice through education.
I have an unwavering commitment to peace and most importantly SDG goal 4 of education. I belong to a family of refugees, who were forced to migrate to India from Pakistan after the horrors of the country’s partition and build up their lives. My grandmother, who has been one of the biggest influences in my life, narrated stories about her stay in refugee camps.
At the age of 10 years, along with her family members, she was forced to move to India without any local amenities just to save their life along with hundreds and thousands of migrants from Pakistan to India. At the very young age of 13 years, my grandfather witnessed the bloodshed of his own family members and stayed in a refugee camp for months.
From there on both my grandparents began their journeys, to study once again and dedicated their lives, to spreading peace, happiness, and education. In my own adolescence, I faced molestation by a trusted family member, which was ignored by the patriarchal mindset of my own parents. The incident, though scarring, motivated me to dedicate my life to protecting human rights by supporting the education of students.
During my high school days, I had created and was heading a society called ‘Education for all’ where we students of high school, raised funds from different sponsors to support the education of underprivileged children. We taught them different subjects and arranged stationery, books, bags, uniforms, etc. for each one of them. I started my career with Villageways Charitable Trust (2012- 2018) as Pan India Health Educator. Most of the families, I was associated with through the trust, are affected by a lack of education, and knowledge about nutrition, and public health. My heart lies in working for Peace through SDG goal 4 education. I was especially moved, when in one of the conferences in Delhi by UNESCO on ‘Education and the role of youth in policy making’ Director-General Ms. Irina Bokova cited one incident.
“There are more than 65.3 million people who have been forcibly displaced from their homes because of war or persecution. The vast majority of them stay in refugee camps whose conditions cannot be possibly defined as humane under anyone’s definition.
A Syrian refugee child, aged 6 years, staying in a refugee camp in Lebanon, used to collect cucumbers at 4 am to support his family and at 8 am would go to a tree-shade school to learn something new every day”.
The mission to support education became very clear from that day on. To deepen my understanding to build the capacity to be sensitive & respectful of diversity and to maneuver myself better with people of different cultures, I pursued a Master’s in international peace studies at Soka University Japan at the age of 29yrs.