Award winners 2021: Athar Farooq and Nafisa Islam Fariba (Pakistan)
One of the 2021 award winners was the the project “Right Skills – Bright Future” by Brandt School students Athar Farooq and Nafisa Islam Fariba.
The project is an initiative to upskill women through digital education, so they can be self-employed and self-dependent. The aim is to build a bridge between the challenges and opportunities of acquiring and utilizing digital education in Pakistan in the disputed territory of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The freelancing market provides immense opportunity for females of Pakistan, a country with the lowest women employment rate in the world. If provided the right tools and education, college students more prone to dropouts could work self-employed from home. The aim is to pilot with a certain number of female students in collaboration with Read Foundation, an NGO with 390 local schools and colleges all over Pakistan. The project plans to provide the female students a starting point with digital skills, so that going forward they can participate in the digital labor force and achieve financial independence.
This project is dedicated to Allah Rakhi, mother of one of the award winners. She died on 06.09.2021 from Covid-19.
