An inspiring story becomes extremely valuable when it contains real life experiences and in connection to this, we are sharing with you today an inspiring story of our International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) alumna Mehwish Abbasi. She is an accomplished journalist and peerless writer who works in areas of women’s rights, education, and environment. For her, journalism is a great profession and reporting is an excellent opportunity to completely step into someone else’s life.
In 2014, Meridian hosted a roundtable discussion with an International Visitor Leadership Program on “Conflict Sensitive Reporting,” in collaboration with the State Department. The ten members of the international media—from Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, and Tunisia—met with their U.S.-based peers working in support of freedom of speech and journalist safety. Fortunately, our Mehwish participated in this program. She visited four cities to learn about the media’s role in providing reliable information in times of strife. Her IVLP was programmed by Meridian International Center (Washington, DC), in partnership with World Oregon (Portland, OR), Boulder Council for International Visitors (Boulder, CO), and World Denver (Denver, CO).
Mehwish Abbasi is also one of the recipients of the 2022 Global Ties U.S. IVLP Alumni Award for Social Innovation and Change. She has been given this award for her services in empowering marginalized communities to create equitable and inclusive strategies to address climate change. She spoke about her community services & IVLP experience in the Global Ties U.S National meeting 2022 happened in Washington D.C.
According to Mehwish, her IVLP experience helped build up her confidence as a public speaker and strengthen her vision to advance social justice and community-led solutions to climate change and development. “It enhanced my personality in every perspective,” says Mehwish. “It also helped me connect with different people from different fields, and those contacts later helped me start my project and campaign on climate action.”
Since returning from her IVLP, Mehwish has become a leading voice in Pakistan for human rights in connection with climate change. She served as the Youth Group Director for PUAN, where she organized activities on girls’ education, tree planting, global warming, faith and harmony, and human rights. Her writing has been published in national newspapers.
She has also organized awareness sessions surrounding climate issues in her hometown, Bandhi, and become a mentor to young girls from her local province to teach them about climate change, social justice, and equality. Mehwish built a platform, “Climate Action – Let Girls Learn and Educate Equally to Protect Our Planet,” to ensure that youth voices are heard and made part of solutions to climate issues. She also helped launch the Ecojustice Project, a digital platform to promote global climate justice and cross-sectorial climate action and amplify the voices of marginalized communities. “Our goal is to make climate education a right, so students understand what’s going on, and our biggest challenge is to enter a better future,” she says.
