Pakistan Activities
Dr. Aamir Khan discusses mHealth
SAI hosted Aamir Khan at Harvard University on Tuesday, May 21. Dr. Khan is an epidemiologist based in Karachi, Pakistan where he directs the Indus Hospital TB Control Program in southern Pakistan, and additionally conducts TB research and provides technical assistance in Tajikistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Peru and Indonesia. He is also the Executive Director of Interactive Research and Development, a regional resource for innovative global health research and delivery.
SAI hosted a lunch with Dr. Khan and faculty from across Harvard who focus on the areas of health and health delivery models. Dr. Khan and the faculty shared their insights about the field.
In this TEDx talk, Dr. Khan expresses his dream to use cellphones to improve provision of healthcare in Pakistan and uses his experience in the field to share his work with technology.
SHAHEEN-Pakistan – Advice Portal for Pakistanis
Introducing a New Admissions-Advice Portal for Pakistanis: Help by Donating Just One Hour
THE PROBLEM: Inadequacies of guidance and counseling available to bright students across Pakistan. Unfortunately, only elite Pakistani students have access to guidance and counseling concerning higher education, fellowship, or residency programs abroad. Many bright students fail to get admissions, simply because their institutions or personal networks cannot guide them. This situation is a long-term collective loss for the entire nation.
THE SOLUTION: An online resource, in collaboration with GEO, providing admissions information. We are a group of students from Harvard, MIT, and other universities, who are collaborating with GEO Television Network to address is problem. We are developing a free online portal that will make available country-specific and program-specific guidance on how to ensure a strong application.
THE IMPACT: Increase in foreign-educated Pakistanis who become an asset to themselves, their families, and the entire nation. Shaheen-Pakistan’s online portal will help overcome the current inadequacies of guidance and counseling available to bright students across Pakistan — wherever they may be. We strongly believe that better-educated Pakistanis will be an asset to themselves, their families, and the entire nation in the long run.
| YOUR CONTRIBUTION: Shaheen-Pakistan does not need your money — we need one hour of your time to get your insights. Are you someone who has gone through the application process and gained admission into a university, fellowship, or residency program abroad? Are you willing to spend an hour sharing your insights? Your insights will be collected and consolidated with tips from other people in the same program, resulting in a comprehensive admissions tip-sheet for your program.Click here (http://goo.gl/4PkLi) to tell us a bit about yourself and we’ll contact you soon. |
The little time you spend with us on this project can enable innumerable other Pakistanis to avail the same opportunities in life that you have been privileged to access — bright young people who may otherwise fail to gain admission simply because there was no one to guide them.
Thank you,
SHAHEEN-Pakistan Steering Committee
Shaheena Raheem (Harvard). Bilal Malik (Harvard). Mahvish Shaukat (MIT). Zohaib Hassan (MIT). Ali Tajdar (Rutgers). Fatima Abbas (NUS). Rahman Saleem (LUMS).
Harvard South Asia Week, April 8-12
The India & South Asia Program at Harvard Kennedy School announces the Harvard South Asia week from April 8 to 12. Speakers include Cameron Munter, former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Shyam Saran, Former Foreign Secretary to India, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Senior Correspondent and Associate Editor, Washington Post, Ashok Gadgil, University of California, Berkeley, and Robert Blake, U.S. Assistant Secretary, South and Central Asian Affairs.
SAI will cosponsor the lecture with Ashok Gadgil on ‘Solutions for the Bottom 2 Billion‘ as part of our Social Enterprise Seminar Series.
Innovation in Education: Lessons for Entrepreneurship in Pakistan
The third Video Conference of the new SAI Series of Webinars focused on ‘Innovation in Education: Lessons for Entrepreneurship in Pakistan’. Professor Fernando Reimers, Ford Foundation Professor of International Education and Director of Global Education and of International Education Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Imran Sarwar, Co-Founder, Rabtt (Connection); MPP Class of 2013, Harvard Kennedy School of Government led the discussion with academic sites across Pakistan. In addition, for the first time a Facebook event for the Webinar attracted 120 people to virtually attend the event – our partner, Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission provided a live web link for online streaming so that the discussion was available to anyone with an internet connection.
Professor Reimers started his presentation on ‘Educating to Change the World’ with acknowledging how much education has changed over the last 25 years – the very fact of the Video Conference itself through which sites were virtually connected is a demonstration of how much technology has enhanced access around the world. He said we are in a new era in history when instead of top-down planning individuals and small groups of people are taking on big challenges – it’s a time of great potential change. He spoke of the fact that we need to move from teaching low-level cognitive skills that had been the focus of much formal education in the past to higher level leadership skills for the 21st century by developing adaptable skills to apply knowledge and learning in new ways. He spoke of the great work of Injaz al-Arab under the visionary leadership of Soraya Salti that he has been helping evaluate over the last 2 years and the phenomenal outcomes of the program in developing a sense of agency in youth and the ability to see challenges as opportunities. He also spoke of the ability inherent in all of us to teach and that we can’t expect professional teachers to bear all the burdens of teaching – he exhorted the audience to action. In reply to a twitter question about encouraging business and academia linkages, he spoke of an example from Monterey, Mexico about an innovative approach taken by a University president who asked local government and business leaders how his institution could help them grow – he then led the change to respond to those social demands – exactly the kind of model higher education needs to move towards to be a center for development and innovation in the 21st century.
Imran Sarwar spoke of his experiences along with a friend and colleague from LUMS, Aneeq Ahmed Cheema when they formed Rabtt in the summer of 2011. Listening to his personal story of how he managed family and social expectations in going down his chosen and unconventional path to make a start at changing the reality of children who attend public sector schools was heartening. He exhorted would-be entrepreneurs to not wait to start till conditions were perfect or support was forthcoming – he said, start now and you’ll attract people who think like you to join your work – and that money and finances will also flow to the work you start! He spoke of how privileged children from elite schools live in their bubbles while children in public sector schools are very street smart. Rabtt is working on connecting these two worlds. Professor Reimers reiterated that a progressive society must be more equitable and heartily endorsed Imran’s efforts –at the end he asked us all to free ourselves from toxic mentalities and begin to take responsibility to change social conditions – now!
Inspire Pakistan Interview of Imran Sarwar for Rabtt
Mariam Chughai (doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education) ably moderated the Videoconference and handled switching between different sites enabled by HEC’s Virtual Education Project and Erum Sattar (doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School) moderated an active twitter feed on: #SAIEdInnovation
Innovation in Education
Photos from the video conference discussion on lessons for entrepreneurship in Pakistan.Co-sponsored with the Harvard Pakistan Student Group
Readings:
http://blogs.hbr.org/innovations-in-education/2011/03/educational-innovation-technol.html
http://www.americasquarterly.org/preview-fall2010-reimers
http://drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline/fall-2012/innovating-universities
Troublemakers: Entrepreneurial Approaches Against Corruption
What does the “business” of corruption-fighting look like? What are the key challenges and how does one measure successes? Corruption is the top issue in emerging market economies — and transparency is the most potent tool available to combat corruption. In a video conference with thirteen sites in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka (see list below), Professor Karthik Ramanna of Harvard Business School described his recent work on how entrepreneurs in China, Russia, and India built organizations to combat corruption. These entrepreneurs have leveraged transparency in their anti-corruption businesses, although they differ in important ways in their reliance on the Internet, their use of anonymity, and their engagement with local political and cultural institutions.
In China, Professor Ramanna talked about Caijing Magazine, which works within the Chinese elite to enforce accountability from a privileged near-insider position. Learn more about the case here. In Russia, Rospil.info is a crowd-sourced website that uses the anonymity of the internet to fearlessly enforce anti-corruption and whistleblowing with a much greater militancy. In just over a year, Rospil claims it has prevented $1.5 billion in bribes. Learn more about the case here. Finally, Profsesor Ramanna discussed the website ipaidabribe.com, based in India (though there are sites in several other countries). The website encourages people to report bribes they have paid or resisted paying.
Common themes from these three examples include the use of transparency as a tool against corruption, the Internet as a key vehicle for this transparency, and the deployment of transparency is contextualized by political/cultural barriers.
Professor Ramanna then opened the discussion to questions and input from participants on what entrepreneurial corruption-fighting in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka might look like.
Read the Harvard Gazette Coverage of this event.
Troublemakers Photo Gallery
Photos from SAI's video conference with sites in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Troublemakers Photo Gallery
Photos from SAI's video conference with sites in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.To follow the conversation on twitter, check out #SAItroublemakers.
The participating sites included:
Bangladesh:
BRAC University, Dhaka
Pakistan:
Foundation for Advancement of Science and Technology (FAST), Lahore
Higher Education Commission (HEC), Islamabad
Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore
Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi
College of Business Management (CBM), Karachi
University of Gujrat, Gujrat
COMSATS Institute of Science and Technology (CIIT), Lahore
University of Agriculture, Faisalabad
Karachi School for Business & Leadership (KSBL), Karachi
QuaId-i-Azam University (QAU), Islamabad
Forman Christian College University (FCCU), Lahore
Sri Lanka:
American Center, Colombo
The Future of Water Security in the Indus River Basin: Risks and Opportunities
Pakistan relies on the largest contiguous irrigation system in the world, namely the Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) for basic food security and supply of water for all sectors of the economy. The IBIS is thus the backbone of the country’s economy. The agriculture sector that is supported by this system continues to play a critical role in the economy and the livelihoods of rural communities. Agriculture in most areas is not possible without irrigation because the climate is arid to semi-arid with low and variable rainfall. Climate change will therefore impact the overall water availability and agriculture yields in this system. Therefore, the objective (of the talk) was to simulate climate change scenarios in existing models that are being used for Pakistan, and to explore how these scenarios of climate variability (e.g. floods),agriculture and water policies will impact the macro-economy and different households.
By using this broad, holistic approach to estimate the likely hydrologic and crop impacts of climate change risks, the macro-economic and household-level responses are an effective method for assessing a variety of adaptation investments and policies. The results of the model and the key takeaways were that the scenarios for the future from the Global Climate Models (GCM’s) show a great deal of uncertainty. This is in fact a positive thing because it will prepare Pakistan for uncertainty and adaptability rather than preparing for a determined scenario. The model framework presented by Casey Brown, using existing models can prove to be effective for use at a provincial level where economic allocation of water can lead to optimal productivity. – Laila Kasuri, student at Harvard College
Ambassador Sherry Rehman visits Harvard
Her Excellency Sherry Rehman, Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, joined Meghan O’Sullivan, Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Professor of Practice, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, for a public address at the JFK Forum, with opening remarks from Iris Bohnet, Professor of Public Policy; Director, Women and Public Policy Program and Academic Dean at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her Excellency discussed the past and present of U.S.-Pakistan relations while sharing recommendations for the future of this highly consequential bilateral relationship. Topics addressed included collaboration in ensuring a sustainable future for Afghanistan post-2014, as well as Pakistan’s progress in democratic reforms and women’s empowerment. Questions from the audience ranged from Pakistan’s upcoming elections and efforts to combat corruption to potential compromise on drone strikes and ongoing security challenges.
Following an address at the JFK Forum, SAI hosted a lunch with Ambassador Rehman and faculty from across Harvard. The lunch was an opportunity for the faculty to share their work on Pakistan both on campus and in the region.
The Harvard Pakistan Student Group (HPSG), spearheaded by Mariam Chughtai, Founding-President and doctoral candidate at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Erum Sattar, President and doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School, shared the development of the Pakistan Innovation Network, an ongoing collaboration between SAI and HPSG.
View the video of the JFK Forum with Ambassador Rehman, cosponsored by the Harvard Institute of Politics, the South Asia Institute, and the Harvard Pakistan Student group.
Harvard Club of Pakistan, Islamabad Chapter – Event with Mr. Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, EU Ambassador to Pakistan
Harvard Club of Pakistan (HCP), Islamabad Chapter, hosted a meet and greet event on January 27, 2012 with His Excellency, Mr. Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, EU Ambassador to Pakistan and a graduate of Harvard College ’84. Alumnae from the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard School of Public Health attended the event. Mr. Andrew Woodcock, Counselor Justice and Home Affairs at the EU delegation to Pakistan and a HKS alum, accompanied Ambassador Wigemark.
Ambassador Wigemark shared a personal journey from his native country Sweden to Harvard, and from Harvard to the new EU foreign service. He also shared his thoughts on how the EU is helping Pakistan to grapple with its many socio-economic challenges, including law and order, security, the economic and energy crisis, WTO, GATS and education for development.
Concept of Global Lawyer and Future of Legal Education Conference
Center for Law and Policy (CLP) hosted the second conference of Global Trends in Legal Education (GTLE), titled “Concept of Global Lawyer and Future of Legal Education,” on December, 15 2012 at Royal Palm Golf and Country Club, Lahore. The conference was designed to discuss:
- The concept and significance of “global lawyer”.
- Whether existing systems of legal education are doing enough to produce sufficient “global lawyers”?
- What reforms are required in Pakistani system of legal education in order to prepare students for a globalizing legal services market?
The conference was convened by Syed Imad-ud-Din Asad, Harvard Law School Alum; Founder and Director, Center for Law and Policy, and included remarks by Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, among other prominent academics and practitioners from Pakistan and the US, including several Harvard alumni.
It was the second time in Lahore that distinguished professors from prominent law schools in the United States engaged in a meaningful dialogue with Pakistani lawyers and law professors on such a scale. Read more here.
Spurring Entrepreneurship: A Case for Inclusive Innovation in Emerging Markets
Spurring Entrepreneurship: A Case for Inclusive Innovation in Emerging Markets
Lessons For Pakistan from China and India
“What will your entrepreneurial claim to fame be?” – Tarun Khanna, addressing future and current entrepreneurs in Pakistan.
On Friday, October 19, SAI led a groundbreaking video conference with 20 university sites in Pakistan.Tarun Khanna, Director of the Harvard South Asia Initiative & Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School addressed the contextual constraints to entrepreneurship in emerging economies, with important insights for fostering an entrepreneurship ecosystem in Pakistan. During the seminar Professor Khanna engaged with lively audiences across 20 institutions both directly via the video conference and through a twitter feed, #saipak.
Citing specific examples from his research in India and China, Professor Khanna highlighted companies that have navigated through the complexities of private and state constraints and are contributing positively to the economy while making noticeable impact. Productive change in the economy can come about by what he calls a “deep degree of contextual intelligence,” or the willingness to be creative and to take risks.
When asked what his first piece of advice to entrepreneurs in Pakistan might be, he suggested they start small, and pick a problem with a consumable item and solve that problem. To teach entrepreneurs, he told the audience, theory is one thing – but they also need the hands on experience.
Ahsan Jamil, CEO of the Aman Foundation offered opening remarks. Dr. Shahid Qureshi, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Associate Director for the Center for Entrepreneurial Development at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) Karachi moderated the event. The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) served as the video conference bridge, connecting SAI with audiences across Pakistan.
Watch the video from the event here.
Co-sponsored by the Aman Foundation
SAI Announces Pakistan Innovation Network
The Pakistan Innovation Network (PIN) will create a comprehensive and responsive ecosystem of entrepreneurship in Pakistan, which entails capacity building and coordination of stakeholders. This network includes faculty, business mentors, investors and philanthropists, development agencies, public sector initiatives and legal experts. Potential entrepreneurs will be mentored and facilitated through the stages of idea conception, incubation, piloting and scale.
The aim of this network is to inform, impact and affect policy change in key focus areas, including business, education, legal and policy reform, health delivery models, alternative energy, urban development and planning, agriculture, food and water, and financial inclusion.
The South Asia Initiative will support this network through Harvard graduate students working in Pakistan. The model will replicate SAI’s successful Graduate Student Associates (GSA) program, to create SAI Pakistan Innovation Network Fellows.
For more information, email pakistanpin@gmail.com
Harvard Club of Pakistan, Islamabad Chapter Event
The Islamabad Chapter of Harvard Club of Pakistan (HCP) hosted a meet and greet event on Saturday, September 29, 2012 with honorable Ms Rahat K.Hassan, Chairperson Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP). She has done her LLM from Kings College London and has worked as Executive Director, Securities and Exchange Commission (SECP) Pakistan prior to joining CCP. CCP is considered country’s most vibrant regulatory authorities and has been lauded internationally. Mr. Mueen Batley, Member Competition Policy & Research, CCP and a Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) alum also attended the event along with other alumnae.
Click here for further details.
Global Trends in Legal Education Conference Held in Lahore
Center for Law and Policy (CLP) hosted the first conference of Global Trends in Legal Education (GTLE), titled “Clinical and Experiential Learning,” on 11 August 2012 at Pearl Continental Hotel, Lahore. The conference was designed to analyze the goals of clinical and experiential legal education and to explore the possibility of introducing the same in Pakistan.
Syed Imad-ud-Din Asad [LL.M. (Harvard); Founder and Director, Center for Law and Policy; Associate Professor and Director, UMT School of Law and Policy], who conceived the idea of GTLE while attending Global Legal Education Forum (GLEF) at Harvard Law School in March 2012, explained the concept and sgnificance GTLE in his introductory remarks. He was followed by Nina Fite [M.Sc. (NDU); U.S. Consul General in Lahore], who formally inaugurated the event. In her speech, Ms. Fite appreciated the commendable efforts made by Professor Asad aimed at introducing improvements in Pakistani legal academia; and highlighted the need for the exchange of knowledge and experiences across borders and the importance of an efficient system of legal education for a country like Pakistan.
It was the first time that legal scholars from prominent law schools in the United States and India engaged in a dialogue with Pakistani lawyers on such a scale. The event proved to be a tremendous opportunity for both local and foreign scholars to learn from each other’s experiences.
The second conference of GTLE will be held on 15 December 2012.
Read more here.
Attention Organizations in South Asia!
Are you interested in providing an internship opportunity for a Harvard student?
Please considering becoming a SAI partnered organization to offer summer internships to Harvard undergraduate and graduate students. Organizations in various sectors, (health, government, education, microfinance, social enterprise, etc.) are welcome to fill out this survey. SAI will advertise these opportunities on our website, newsletter, and through outreach events on Harvard’s campus.
Please contact us if you have questions about the SAI Internship program!
Harvard University Muslim Alumni Event in Lahore
Harvard University Muslim Alumni (HUMA) hosted an event on August 4, 2012 in Lahore, in order to provide a networking opportunity to Harvard alumni in the city. Despite a storm, alumni of Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Graduate School of Education attended the get together. Peter Kovack, Cultural Affairs Officer, U.S. Consulate in Lahore, and Brinille Ellis, Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Consulate in Lahore, were also present.
This was the second iftar hosted by HUMA in Pakistan. Like last year, this iftar was also sponsored by Center for Law and Policy.
SAI in Pakistan Safarnama (July 2012)
In July 2012, SAI Associate Director Meena Hewett traveled to Pakistan to meet with current and new SAI affiliates and partner organizations. A safarnama refers to travel literature written during the 11th century by Nasir Khusraw: known as the Book of Travels, the Safarnama describes Khusraw’s seven year journey through the Islamic world. In the photos and text below, SAI has compiled a safarnama of SAI’s work and meetings in Pakistan.
Photos from Pakistan Trip
Click on the image on the left to view a photo gallery of images from SAI Associate Director Meena Hewett's trip to Karachi and Lahore, Pakistan.AMAN Foundation Partners with Harvard University, Center for Economic Research in Pakistan, and Tameer MicroFinance Bank Ltd. to Strengthen Financial Investment in Education
Mariam Chughtai, HGSE doctoral candidate, Asim Khwaja, Professor of Public Policy at HKS and Erum Sattar, HLS doctoral candidate at the Education in Pakistan event.
Karachi–The Aman Foundation,SAI, the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) and Tameer Micro Finance Bank Ltd. presented their latest collaborative project which will facilitate low cost, quality education for the rural poor of Pakistan. The event was attended by several experts from the community and about a hundred people in total. The event, held at IBA Karachi, featured a presentation by Professor Asim Khwaja entitled “Investing in the Education Market: Strengthening Private Schools for the Poor,” followed by a panel discussion with experts from pertinent institutional affiliations. Panelists included Nadeem Hussain from Tameer Micro Finance Bank Ltd., Asim Khawaja from CERP and SAI, Aziz Kabani from Sindh Education Foundation, Khadija Bakhtiar from Teach for Pakistan, and Ahsan Jamil, CEO of the Aman Foundation.
Harvard Alumni Series: Talk on Challenges to Policing in Pakistan
On 31 October 2011, a group of Harvard alumni hosted a talk, titled “Challenges to Policing in Pakistan,” at Center for Law and Policy, Lahore, Pakistan. The speaker was Sarmad Saeed Khan, Additional Inspector General, Police Service of Pakistan, who has a vast experience of performing police duties in Pakistan and abroad, and is well respected for his relentless efforts for the development of an efficient police force in the country.
Further details and images from the event are available on the Center for Law and Policy’s website.