For my father, who knew.

I really don't know if I was looking forward to this 30 minutes or somewhat dreading it..... It was awkward enough for me to be in company of someone so important....someone who have reached out to about 17 million people enabling them out of poverty!

Paul Polak, Founder of International Development Enterprises; Founder of D-Rev: Design for the other 90% and also the Founder of Windhorse International is one of our mentors here at the Unreasonable Institute and luckily enough even after the amazing sessions that we get to have with these mentors, each one of us is still offered time of about 30 minutes talk with them during scheduled out times. And my 30 minutes talk was just approaching while I floated inside my mind to gather each specific thing I would like to discuss to him.

The 30 minutes hadn't yet started perhaps when I started out of breath about what we were doing at Sughar, and most amazingly enough he helped me to feel more calm by asking more questions. The 4 strategy model at Sughar to prevent honor killings in Pakistan came as something interesting to him and it wasn't a few minutes when we were emerged in dialogue about how everything was set up and how some failure of our approach made us achieve even higher results.

One thing very interesting is, Paul Polak is someone with whom you would feel like, he is saying : Got 'ya! he did get me if not anyone else, the thoughts of him as someone who was probably too emerged into what he was doing and the fact that he indeed had lot on his hands and might not give much thought to what small just-taken-birth organizations would be doing, he got me because he was opposite of all that I thought, his concentration towards Sughar and what we did awed me.

"Providing people livelihoods and growing their income especially in the case of women, is to me the first solution to all problems", he said. He mentioned about the social restrictions to women in Bangladesh and how this very women bringing income to her family was the one who could break these restrictions and was respected and had a more higher self-esteem. The point is how you stand against a problem or better use that very problem to become the solution itself and while Sughar doing the same thing, he said our approach was much closer to where we start thinking about scalability and sustainability, which is one thing that cant be done by profit for your organization nor the profit for poor or whom you are working with.

I had the great privilege to be introduced through Paul to Paul Meyers of The Ten Thousand Villages organization, which reaches out to millions of people with an effective model of sustainability and scalability including replicable approaches. While talking to him on the phone I got a lot of insight on how organizations ought to be more persistence to some set goals which are hard to achieve at sometimes and in the case where a lot of competition is expected, planning and implementation need a lot of strategies.

Furthermore during my talk to Paul in 30 minutes, I could realize that his basic words most amazingly reflected that if you own a powerful idea, you may feel the need of a power organizational-setup to run it, otherwise its all waste. Thinking in the context of projects makes things unsustainable and thus ineffective and when activities are pre-planned with a strong revenue in-hand, that helps to impact millions if that's what your goal is. I just couldn't agree more!

8 days left until the first ever Unreasonable Institute begins.... the thought itself is scary and exciting! However the most noticeable thing is right when things are being whole lot of a rush for the Unreasonable Institute official team, their enthusiasm keeps growing with it.... tough people, I was thinking while reading down the ever inspiring emails coming on our way while we now pack for Boulder, Colorado!

For me this is just the first of its kind experience where thrilling set of expectations, hopes, fears and odd enough... confusion come along. 10 week stay with worlds most high-impact ventures is nothing that I have experienced before! Of course YouthActionNet(R) Retreat is an exception which has shifted the paradigms of us fellows in just 8 days! I cant forget the time when I was training my team for a whole month on what I had learned during my short time in DC ! 8 days impact was overwhelmingly visible and now we are talking about 10 weeks in a row, We might in fact overflow with skills and expertise:)

While discussing our preparations, one of the fellows pointed out it was quite hard to wrap up while we prepare to take off to Boulder.... I had contemplated on this statement for so long I almost lost its meaning, but then again the importance remained. Total devotion to our ventures is needed at the Unreasonable Institute and it could not be made possible with our mind still strolling back to un-done things back in our countries. However for me wrapping up came with a little more of a different meaning, while I too am wrapping up my work here at Sughar, I am also concentrating on emptying my cup for the Institute..... I dont know if this means I am putting all my expectations on the Institute but for me the sole reason is the rarity of such experiences in my life where the offer was far too high and thus I don't mind being selfish enough to empty my mind off every little bits and pieces of whats inside to take in each second of what I learn from the Unreasonable Institute:)

Now when I pack for this great adventure ahead I leave behind every thing except for the vision, to create a society where women are NOT killed for "honor" but are honored and given equal status and rights.