FarQuest Fariha's Quest: Finding an answer to the question "Why can’t Utopia be a reality?" Wish to add some colors of Utopia to this world because I dare to dream and strive to turn my dreams into reality!

A lot of my TakeBackTheTech posts focus on issues revolving around female harassment and online privacy. However, what I often miss to highlight is the amazing work that some brilliant women are doing on various fronts despite all the problems they face. Their achievements bring not just pride but also a ray of optimism for the rest of us. It makes us women realize the enormous power that we all possess and the wonders that each one of us is capable of making.

In our TakeBackTheTech lingo, we call such women “Sheros” - yes we just formed a feminine version of Heros

Today, I am going to talk about one such shero and her name is Saba Gul. Saba is Co-Founder and Executive Director,BLISS - Business and Life Skills School. Saba being passionate about empowering women through education came up with the idea of setting a school that equips girls and young women from rural Pakistan with essential skills needed to be entrepreneurs and enterprise women. Girls at BLISS do not just study but also work against stipends that make up for the wages they lose to attend school. You can read more about BLISS on their website.

Recently, Saba Gul achieved something to make us all feel proud specially as Pakistani women. She got selected as one of the finalists by Unreasonable Institute - which’s an incubator for social entrepreneurs. Every year this institute gathers 25 extremely talented social entrepreneurs from all around the world who have ideas and projects that can change the world for good. These entrepreneurs are then trained for six weeks by world-class mentors and are connected with several potential investors and partners. This year Saba has been one of these brilliant entrepreneurs.

Have a look at Saba’s presentation for Unreasonable Institute below:

Source: Excerpt from PRESS NOTE, 11 November 2011, Lahore

Route: Kathmandu-Lucknow-Delhi-Amritsar-Lahore-Rawalpindi-Peshawar

The ‘Spinal Beetle’ making a fund-raising and awareness-raising subcontinental journey for spinal injury rehabilitation arrived in Lahore this afternoon. The 1973 Model VW Beetle, driven by journalist and civil rights activist Kanak Mani Dixit from Kathmandu, is also making the trip “to strike a blow for overland connectivity between the countries of Southasia,” he says.

The Spinal Beetle was flagged off from Kathmandu by President Ram Baran Yadav, and in Delhi it was seen off by actor Om Puri and the founder of the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, Maj. HPS Ahluwalia. It arrived in Lahore across the Wagah-Atari border in the early afternoon of 11 November.

The Journey: The 1973 model VW Beetle of the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre (Nepal) started its journey from Kathmandu Valley on 4 November 2011. Coming down to the plains, it entered Uttar Pradesh and reached Lucknow on 5th evening. Westward, it took the National Highway-2 to Agra, getting on to the Grand Trunk Road originally regularised by Sher Shah Suri in the 16th century.

The ‘Spinal Beetle’ arrived at the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC) on 7 November evening. Travelling further along the Grand Trunk Road, it stopped off at Chandigarh and Amritsar before arriving at the Wagah-Atari border. The Spinal Beetle will enter Pakistan via the Wagah-Atari border and, in Lahore, visit the Mayo Hospital. From Lahore, the car will ride the Grand Trunk Road as well as the M-1 motorway to Rawalpindi / Islamabad, and end the journey at the Paraplegic Centre in Hayatabad, Peshawar on 16 November.

Why the Adventure: The sudden rise of the number of patients over the last year has forced the Spinal Centre-Nepal to raise its service from 39 beds to 51. We seek to raise USD 110,000 from the 1100 mile journey, at the ‘rate’ of USD 100 per mile from friends and supporters worldwide. At midway, the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre in Delhi is 540 miles from Kathmandu. The final destination, the Paraplegic Centre in Peshawar, is 1100 miles away. About USD 35,000 of the USD 110,000 goal had been raised by the time the vehicle arrived in Lahore.

Awareness: The Spinal Beetle Rally is also an effort to raise awareness of spinal injury prevention, rescue, care and rehabilitation in the Subcontinent. In this effort, the Spinal Centre-Nepal is assisted by Indian Spinal Injuries Center-Delhi and the Paraplegic Centre-Peshawar.

‘Overland connectivity’: Kanak Mani Dixit hopes that the drive of the Spinal Beetle from Nepal through India and Pakistan will also help promote the goal of ‘overland connectivity’ across Southasian land borders so that there is high-volume people-to-people contact. “The visa regimes must be softened, and the people at large must feel free to move about,” he says.

The Trip So Far: After a gracious send-off from Ram Baran Yadav, President of Nepal, the Spinal Beetle left Kathmandu Valley and arrived at the Bharatpur Hospital. Interactions were held for the start-up of a spinal injury rehabilitation unit there, with the help of Spinal Center-Nepal. The Hospital committee contributed Rs 50,000 for the Spinal Beetle’s fund-raising drive. Having come down past Gorkha District of Nepal, crossing the border we came to Gorakhpur, where we learnt in Hindustan newspaper that Pakistan had allowed the opening of the Gorakhnath Temple in Peshawar after 60 year closure.

In Lucknow, the SIPS ‘super speciality hospital’ organised an interaction with patients and staff, and we met activists who were working on peace related issues, including India-Pakistan people-to-people solidarity. From Lucknow, we took a spanking new superhighway to Agra, which is on National Highway -2, and part of the Grand Trunk Road, whose original incarnation was built by Sher Shah Suri in the 16th century. We will be following this road all the way to Peshawar. In Agra, we were greeted and hosted by the Physicians for Peace and Development, which is also affiliated with the Physicians for Social Responsibility. At the interaction with the doctors there, it emerged that there is no spinal injury rehabilitation centre in the city even though there were seven or eight neurosurgeons there. Some time was spent visiting the Taj Mahal, on the very day of Eid, and Agra Fort, the ‘power center’ of the Mughals.

In Delhi, a grand reception was organised by the Indian Spinal Injuries Center, with which the Spinal Centre-Nepal has been collaborating since the latter’s inception a decade ago. Speaking at the function, Major HPS Ahluwalia, founder of ISIC, lauded the three-country drive for helping spread awareness about spinal injury rehabilitation, and promised the support of ISIC both for the drive’s fund-raising objective as well as for the Spinal Centre-Nepal. The Director of ISIC Dr. HS Chabra repeated these sentiments, while journalist and peace activist Kuldip Nayar (born in Sialkot) lauded the Spinal Beetle participants for helping to raise awareness about people-to-people contact across Southasian frontiers. At the flag-off, actor Om Puri bowed in a ‘namaskar’ to the Spinal Beetle and talked about the importance of “dignity to the disabled”. Sending the Beetle off on its journey to Lahore, Maj Ahluwalia recalled his childhood in Lahore. He suggested that Dixit work to bring together a Southasian association for spinal injury rehabilitation. From Delhi, with an over-night stopover in Chandigarh, the Spinal Beetle arrived in Amritsar, to be hosted by Tejinder Singh Gogi, the hotelier and significant India-Pakistan ‘link person’. The team found time to visit the brilliantly lit Harminder Sahib (the Golden Temple) on the very night of Guru Nanak’s birthday.

The Mayuri Restaurant of Jalandhar: During the drive into Amritsar, the team stopped off at the road-side Mayuri restaurant at ‘bypass Jalandhar’. Only when the Spinal Beetle was already in Amritsar did Dixit realise that he had left all the passports and travel documents at the restaurant. Thankfully, he received a call from the proprietors, the Prajapati family. Upon return, there was joyous handover of the satchel. The grandfather, 96-year-old Barkat Singh, was originally from the village of Fatehgad near Sialkot. He asked that a fistful of earth be brought back for him from Fatehgad.

The Rallyists: Kanak Mani Dixit, Founder-Chair of the Spinal Centre-Nepal, is driving the Spinal Beetle. He is accompanied by Shanta Dixit, board member of the Spinal Centre-Nepal and educationist. It was Kanak’s trekking accident a decade ago, resulting in a broken back, which led to the establishment of the Spinal Centre-Nepal. Dixit has been a journalist since 1971, and has worked to maintain Nepal as an ‘open society’, fighting King Gyanendra’s autocracy and challenging the Maoist party to stand by the peace process.

Done it Before: The Spinal Beetle has done the Kathmandu-Dhaka stretch twice, in 2002 and 2005, to generous response.

About the Spinal Centre Nepal: Inaugurated by Sir Edmund Hillary on April 2002, the Spinal Centre-Nepal will be ten years old in 2012. Originally catering to patients from ‘traditional accidents’ such as fall from trees and cliff-sides, spinal injury victims of ‘modern-day accidents’ related to construction, rock mining and traffic events are increasingly filling our wards. We offer physiotherapy, occupational therapy, nursing, medical care, counselling and home rehabilitation. We are also involved in prevention. The Spinal Centre is run by the non-profit Spinal Injury Sangha – Nepal.

Website: Details of the ‘Great Nepal-India-Pakistan Spinal Beetle Drive’ are to be found at www.sirc.org.np. The site also gives information on online support and pledges.

Lahore Contacts:
Farjad Nabi, Phone: 322-4491969
Dr Waseem Iqbal
Head of Department
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine
Combined Military Hospital
CMH Lahore Medical College
Lahore Cantt, Pakistan
Office: +92-42-6699-36174
Cell phone: +92-333-5600-504

Peshawar Contact
Ilyas M Syed,
CEO, Paraplegic Center
Hayatabad, Peshawar, Pakistan
Phone: 92-919217900-2

Kathmandu Contact:
Esha Thapa, Director, Spinal Centre-Nepal
Tel: +977 11 660847/48
spinalinju@wlink.com.np
eshthapa@hotmail.com
www.sirc.org.np

GUEST POST

Today, I am narrating a story of my beloved friend, who had just entered into teenage, unaware of everything that can happen to her. She was enjoying her youth, was lively and free from all worries. It was 14th August i.e. the Independence Day and she got dressed up in white shalwar kamiz with a green dupatta on it, wore a badge of Pakistani flag. Filled with patriotic spirits, took her way to school as the school was celebrating Independence Day.

We were three friends who used to go to school together and it was her routine to take two of us from our place as our building was close to school. Like always she came to pick us up, it seemed a normal day but no one knew that is was not as normal as it seemed to be. A stranger entered in the same building where she was waiting for us to come down. She could not guess the intensions of that person until just after few seconds that man came closer to her and held her so tightly that the poor girl could not help herself come out of the man’s grip; the man kissed her lips and within seconds he was gone away, leaving emotional scars that took years to go away. She did not really know the meaning of sexual harassment and assault one could carry out to satisfy the lust.

She was so embarrassed as if it was her mistake, kept crying and rubbing her lips as if she has got dirt on them. Meanwhile, I came down and saw her crying badly, I kept asking what had happened to her but she was not in her normal state as that incident left a deep impact on her mind. When she got back in her senses, she told us the entire story. We felt furious but also got scared as what we could do if something likes that happen to us. A feeling of helplessness overshadowed us but I believe the least we could do is to educate all the girls as a mother, sister or a friend so that they should also remain alert specially while being alone and speak out if God forbid anything like this happens to any of them; so that together we can share these unpleasant experiences and use our combined wisdom to do something to let such incidents not happen.

Just late last night I noticed a hash tag #EndSH taking rounds on Twitter. Reading a few tweets made using this hash tag made me soon realize that June 20 is being observed as a day to speak out against sexual harassment, abuse and violence. As reported in this blogpost the #EndSH initiative is brain child of Egyptian startup HarassMap. However, realizing the importance of curbing this menace, people from various parts of the world specially Middle East have now jumped on the bandwagon.

Sexual harassment and similar issues have always been close to my heart mainly because of the number of lives it effects and also because being a woman I have also faced harassment myself not once or twice but several times; most recently on a flight while coming back from New York. While I regularly tweet, blog, write, speak on this topic, today, I would rather borrow someone else’s words to address all the men out there and show support to #EndSH from Pakistan. I believe creating awareness among men about this issue is as or perhaps even more important as it is for women.

During my recent trip to US as part of the IVLP (more on this later) I met Dr. Robert Jensen at the University of Texax, Austin. Wonderful Dr. Jensen, who proudly calls himself a staunch feminist gave me his book “Getting Off - Pornography and the End of Masculinity” after I told him about my interest in ending the various forms of VAW(Violence Against Women). I have started reading this book already and each chapter of it is turning out to be a paradigm shift for me.

Below are the words of Andrea Dworkin who became the force of change for Dr. Robert. How? Read below and you’ll get to know.Andrea told men in 1983:

“I don’t believe rape is inevitable or natural…..Have you ever wondered, why we [women] are not just in armed combat against you? It’s not because there’s a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence……We do not want to do the work of helping you to believe in your humanity. We cannot do it anymore. We have always tried. We have been repaid with systematic exploitations and systematic abuse. You are going to have to do this yourselves from now on and you know it.” -1

If you also wish to eliminate sexual and other forms of harassment from within your society, then start nurturing your human side and encourage others around you to do the same. Let’s live to see the change that we all have been wanting to see for ages.

Footnotes:
-1 Robert Jensen, Getting Off - Pornography and the End of Masculinity,South End Press,2007, p7

“I am old and at this age I really want to do something for the community than myself” - said Raul and his words resonated with me immediately. I met Raul in the Silicon valley during Eighth Innovation Journalism conference at Stanford. Silicon Valley as most of you may know is symbolically speaking the Mecca for technology companies and start-ups. At places like these, I would often expect people to talk just business and profits. Talks that merely revolve around making more and more money tend to be least interesting for me. I believe in “The People-Centered Model of Business” shortly referred to as the PC-MOB that my friend and mentor Ramla Akhtar introduced to me long time back during my senior years at university. So, it was really pleasant to meet Raul who has similar beliefs as I could sense from his upcoming project Koowall.

Koowall is what can be seen as yet another social collaboration website, however, what makes it different from several social networking websites already out there is the philosophy behind it. Raul looked pretty disturbed with idea of how often a bunch of people gain popularity online, become social media stars and often overshadow the conversation by several others. He believes in living the true sense of community where every member of the community has a voice that can be heard. It is upon this belief that he has created a really cool wall that would encourage people to share information in a communal manner.

Raul gave me a tour of the Koowall community that he aspires to build and walking through the streets and alleys of Koowall made me all excited; because this was something that I have been looking forward to have for so long. Yes, I have already seen the interface of Koowall which is yet to be launched - envy me!

I use twitter religiously and love it but what irritates me the most about it is how I am almost always unable to dig out what I tweeted say two months back or for that matter even a week ago. However, Koowall is likely to make my life easier. How? Naah, I am not going to let the cat out of the bag yet. I would rather want you to wait for the official launch of Koowall or rush to be part of the private beta which is coming out on 27th of June.

I would encourage you to grab a private beta invite by subscribing at Koowall website and see what Koowall can do for you. I already have at least a few things in mind for which it can be used in Pakistan (6) . Yes, envy me again . You might want to follow Koowall on Twitter and Facebook too.

Koowall has got an aesthetically pleasing UI. I also had a discussion with Raul on how they can make Koowalling safe and secure and was glad to see his commitment about doing the same.So, I am positive that all those of you who decide to use it will have fun. Happy koowalling!

Salam Netizens, live blogger is in action once again and will be covering the International Social Media Summit live from Karachi, Pakistan, on June 11, 2011 from 9-6pm local time.

Wonder what Social Media Summit is all about? Read further the introduction to it that I have stolen from the summit’s invite email:

“With the sponsorship and assistance of several major technology companies, Intel and Raffles Systems and media partners Newsweek Pakistan, Express Media Group, City89FM, PC World and the U.S. Consulate General in Karachi, Network! Will gather together Pakistan’s top bloggers, Twitterati, netizens and other experts from the local social media scene with bloggers and social media experts from around the world for a day of interactive sessions designed to spark discussion, forge new connections and showcase the positive force that Pakistan’s active social media is.

Three exciting sessions in the morning of the 11th, on Education & Good Governance: Going Digital, Women & Social Activism in the New Media Era, and Monetizing your Social Media Space, will be followed by several breakout workshops throughout the afternoon. The idea of the summit is to enable a collective gathering of people from the Pakistani Blogosphere and how to enable them as well as understand better on bringing about a positive change through social media.

Joining us for the sessions will be prominent international bloggers, Ong Hock Chaun from Malaysia, Hanny K. and Nonandita P. from Indonesia, Rebecca Chiao and Mohamed El Dahshan from Egypt.”

Howdy folks, here I am covering the 8th Conference on Innovation Journalism live from the Stanford University. Expect to read about some interesting talks.

According to IJ-8 ’s mission:

“….Our handsets are feeding us information from the Net, and it feeds the Net information from us, by us, about us.

We are becoming a part of a growing collective intelligence, which is conscious about space and time. This collective intelligence has an infrastructure: search engines enable people to find information, and social network applications enable communication between people, together enabling people to make collective research, collective reasoning, collective decisions, but also enabling fragmentation of these things, by empowering each single user.

It’s farewell to oblivion, information is no longer forgotten, and the access to information is becoming less of an issue than access to attention…..”

Read more about what IJ-8 is all about here.

Decades ago Digital Divide was the name given to technological disparity of having or not having a computer. While, the advent and expansion of mobile phone technology and low end computing devices was perceived to be bridging this disparity gap by some as those without traditional computers too gained access to technology; others like Lisa Servon saw it as creating further divides. She in her book “Bridging the Digital Divide” mentioned that “digital divide is a symptom of a larger and more complex problem — that of persistent poverty and inequality.”

The economic divide that exists between different segments of the society has and will always have a role to play, but that alone is not the factor when it comes to info-tech disparities…..

To read the complete story, grab a copy of Spider Magazine’s May 2011 issue.

Cyber crime is a growing scourge for Pakistan particularly in the absence of a well-drafted and comprehensive cyber crime law. In 2007, Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance came out in public just after its approval from the Cabinet and when it was to be sent to the National Assembly of Pakistan, to be approved as a law. It was largely prepared in silos with the purpose to curb electronic crime; however, it was met with dissent from individuals as well as businesses. Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance shortly referred to as PECO was labeled “Draconian” due to its major flaws and lacunas.

Read More…

A week ago, a training on the topic of “Leading from Within” by Sualeha Bhatti was organized at my office. At first I was a bit skeptic about this training as I feared it would talk about the same old concepts of being a good leader and I’ll end up wasting my time. However, 5 minutes into it and my perception changed completely.Not only Sualeha Bhatti is an awesome trainer but she gave us some really practical tips on how to lead a happier and fulfilling life and develop the confidence as well as traits to be a good leader.

Part of that training was dedicated to setting priorities and objectives of life. We were asked what are the things that if we achieve in life will make us look back and say ‘Life well lived! “. It was a room filed with about 16 people and each one of us had different goals and objectives to achieve, but everyone of us had one common goal of life too:

However, most of us are so busy making careers and making money that we barely get to spend quality time with our families. It got me thinking about how we are running behind the mirage of that ‘one day’ when we think we will have all the luxuries of life and we will be enjoying fun time with our families; not knowing that paradoxically we are running away from that very day. Our families still care for us, they still love us and they are still with us, however, tomorrow may not be same. With the increasing work life imbalance that most of us face, we may end up being alone and then even though we might have all the gold and silver of the world, we may still not be able to look back and say “Life well lived” …..