SPEAKERS
Dr. Amjad Saqib
Dr. Amjad Saqib a prominent social worker, volunteer and development professional, graduated from King Edward Medical College Lahore. After his resignation from civil service he has, besides rendering philanthropic and social services, been providing consultancy services to Asian Development Bank, International Labour Organization, UNICEF, World Bank, and Canadian International Development Agency. His areas of expertise include poverty alleviation, microfinance, social mobilization and education management.
His venture Akhuwat is a micro-financing programme that provides interest-free loans to the deserving and helps them invest their loans into practical small businesses. This is the largest individual based lending programme in the country and is referred to in many international universities as a unique and innovative model in microfinance. He is Akhuwat’s Executive Director and main driving force since its inception in year 2001. Akhuwat is a loan-return rate of more than 99% from its lenders. To date, the organization has changed thousands of lives by helping people establish businesses and earn their livings honourably, and saving them from sinking into interests and life-long debt.
His venture Akhuwat is a micro-financing programme that provides interest-free loans to the deserving and helps them invest their loans into practical small businesses. This is the largest individual based lending programme in the country and is referred to in many international universities as a unique and innovative model in microfinance. He is Akhuwat’s Executive Director and main driving force since its inception in year 2001. Akhuwat is a loan-return rate of more than 99% from its lenders. To date, the organization has changed thousands of lives by helping people establish businesses and earn their livings honourably, and saving them from sinking into interests and life-long debt.
Dr. Arfa Zehra
Dr. Arfa Zehra is a Professor of History at Forman Christian College, and also teaches at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. She has served as Principle for both the Government College for Women in Gulburg, and Lahore College for Women. She was also a Fellow at the East and West Centre. Dr. Arfa has an MA in Urdu as well as History, and despite having a PhD in History from the University of Hawaii, maintains that she is to date ‘a student of history’. She is a person of tremendous energy and commitment, who practices and urges her students to use their own intelligence to formulate their own rational opinions.
As Chairman of the National Commission for Women and member of the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan, Dr. Arfa is at the heart of the socio-political structure that moulds women empowerment in Pakistan. And with her intellect and experience she rises to the occasion without doubt.
As Chairman of the National Commission for Women and member of the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan, Dr. Arfa is at the heart of the socio-political structure that moulds women empowerment in Pakistan. And with her intellect and experience she rises to the occasion without doubt.
Saba Gul
Saba Gul lives, breathes and dreams female empowerment and finding business solutions to poverty. She is the Founder & Executive Director of BLISS, a social enterprise which offers a solution to the work versus school dilemma faced by underprivileged girls in Pakistan. BLISS equips girls with practical skills as a supplement to conventional curriculum. By profitably marketing these skills in the high-end retail industry, it enables girls to boost their families’ income while getting an education. Over time, through its business and financial literacy curriculum, BLISS provides the girls the tools and training to launch and sustain their own micro-enterprises.
Saba is an alumna of MIT, from where she earned her BS and MS. An engineer by degree, she worked in Silicon Valley prior to BLISS, but gave up her life as a technologist to pursue social good. She has also worked in Sri Lanka on affordable solar lighting for tsunami refugees, and taught entrepreneurship at universities in Africa. Saba was a 2011 Fellow of the Unreasonable Institute. Her work has been recognized by the US State Department, and featured by NBC News, Huffington Post, Gulf News and MIT Technology Review among others.
Saba is an alumna of MIT, from where she earned her BS and MS. An engineer by degree, she worked in Silicon Valley prior to BLISS, but gave up her life as a technologist to pursue social good. She has also worked in Sri Lanka on affordable solar lighting for tsunami refugees, and taught entrepreneurship at universities in Africa. Saba was a 2011 Fellow of the Unreasonable Institute. Her work has been recognized by the US State Department, and featured by NBC News, Huffington Post, Gulf News and MIT Technology Review among others.
Memoona Sajjad
Memoona graduated in English Literature and International Relations and published her book documenting the Islamic response to the Clash of Civilizations theory. She is a freelance writer and blogger. She works as the Academic Co ordinator at Educational Partnership of Islamic and Contemporary Studies (EPIC) and also teaches Sociology and Religion at Lahore Grammar School.
Memoona is very passionate about voluntary social work and is currently involved with the Society for the Advancement of Education (SAVE), Pakistan. She has also recently begun her own free primary education project for Pakistan's poorest school children, 'Virtual Education For All Pakistan (VEFA Pakistan) www.vefapakistan.org.
Memoona is also an alumnus and member of Mosaic International, United Kingdom.
Memoona is very passionate about voluntary social work and is currently involved with the Society for the Advancement of Education (SAVE), Pakistan. She has also recently begun her own free primary education project for Pakistan's poorest school children, 'Virtual Education For All Pakistan (VEFA Pakistan) www.vefapakistan.org.
Memoona is also an alumnus and member of Mosaic International, United Kingdom.
Aneeq Cheema
Aneeq Cheema, young and energetic, is a 2010 graduate from LUMS, with majors in Economics and Political Science. He was the president of LUMS Entrepreneurial Society, responsible for steering nation-wide events such as the YLES. He is who gets very excited by the word ‘social’, by the possibilities that social change can open up for the welfare of the country, and places a great deal of hope in the ability of the youth. Saddened at the same time by the limited opportunity the present education system provides to the youth to exercise their intellectual faculties, he and Imran Sarwar co-founded the NGO Rabtt. Aneeq combines his vision with astute practicality and a meticulous, step-by-step development of ideas into reality.
Taking from his experience at the Seeds of Peace conflict resolution camp in USA, Rabtt holds camps at government and underprivileged schools and teaches subjects like History, Philosophy, Math, English, Art, Drama and Public Speaking to the children. The children are taught by volunteer instructors from various universities and schools, and aims to provide current and new information to the children without indoctrinating them; by allowing them instead to think for themselves and formulate their own opinions. Simultaneously, Rabtt provides and promotes ground for volunteering opportunities for students and young professionals from several institutions; providing opportunity to polish their own skills, and imparting them to the children as well.
Taking from his experience at the Seeds of Peace conflict resolution camp in USA, Rabtt holds camps at government and underprivileged schools and teaches subjects like History, Philosophy, Math, English, Art, Drama and Public Speaking to the children. The children are taught by volunteer instructors from various universities and schools, and aims to provide current and new information to the children without indoctrinating them; by allowing them instead to think for themselves and formulate their own opinions. Simultaneously, Rabtt provides and promotes ground for volunteering opportunities for students and young professionals from several institutions; providing opportunity to polish their own skills, and imparting them to the children as well.
Omair Bangash
Omair Bangash dropped out from FC College in his time, because it just wasn’t the kind of thing he was interested in. Omair’s vision is to give young minds the courage, and the encouragement, to follow their own aspirations. His initiative, The Dream Factory, hopes to prevent big dreams and deviant aspirations from dying out by arranging for motivational speakers, professionals from different fields and intermittent workshops. They value individual potential and feels that young minds deserve not to be discouraged from fulfilling their potential.
Omair has made good use of his own individual potential. He is the co-founder of tossdown.com and Head of Product Vision and Design at hookedtech.com.
Omair has made good use of his own individual potential. He is the co-founder of tossdown.com and Head of Product Vision and Design at hookedtech.com.
Taimur Rahman
Taimur Rahman is a graduate from Grinnell College, and has a PhD from Sussex University in Class Structure of Pakistan. He teaches political science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences at present. His own political beliefs and his need to address the socio-political issues that baffle Pakistan at present is materialised through his vocals, as the lead singer of the band Laal. Laal usually adopts works of poets such as Faiz, or rings socialist in nature.
Visibly a man of many talents as an academic, singer/songwriter, an actor, director and producer, and General Secretary of the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party, Taimur Rahman uses all of these outlets to reach out to people about the social and political dilemmas that exist in their lives.
Visibly a man of many talents as an academic, singer/songwriter, an actor, director and producer, and General Secretary of the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party, Taimur Rahman uses all of these outlets to reach out to people about the social and political dilemmas that exist in their lives.
Sarah Belal
Sarah is the founder and director of Justice Project Pakistan. Sarah oversees JPP’s casework programme, as well as the direct representation of prisoners on death row in Pakistan; focusing on strategic impact cases involving foreign nationals, torture, mental disability and freedom of expression issues.Sarah is also involved in litigation to challenge Pakistan’s complicity in the extraordinary rendition of Pakistani subjects to illegal secret prisons created by the US. Sarah qualified as a barrister after completing the Bar Vocational Course in 2007. She obtained her licence to practice in Pakistan in 2008 and gained rights of audience in the High Court in the same year. She studied law at Oxford University and did her professional legal training in Lahore with Azam Nazir Tarrar from 2007-2008, and with Ramday Law Associates under Reza Farooq from 2008.Sarah now leads the team at Justice Project Pakistan in Lahore.
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