Dear Dad,

How are you? I know I am writing after a couple of days, things have been really busy here but all this time I have missed you a lot especially today on fathers day, when I really wanted to be close to you I feel sad to be really away.... but then again the strong feeling that you are here, next to me, watching me becoming a part of the Unreasonable Institute.... is really especial for me...you have always been the source of my strengths and the reason for my successes...

You know dad, the day I was coming here I still couldn't believe I would be living far from home for so long, the confidence that I had showed so badly in myself that day of my departure as if I knew how to conquer the world was built in.... with my stiff smile and made-up courage I was scared inside..... I was scared of many things dad, and among all was the fact that I will be living far from you all for so long, but you know the trust that you have in me has always been there to make me stronger... I regretted coming to the Unreasonable Institute the night I set foot here, the "Unreasonable Mansion" with the huge glass windows and the dark bushes surrounding it... and all the silence but utter comfort inside, was new world for me.... I had sudden urge of running back home, where it was safe and warm... and with the thought of being on the other side of the world....I had dreaded the next 10 weeks ahead that I was supposed to spend here...... Its been 3 weeks now, today marks the end of the third week, leaving 7 weeks ahead of us.... and you know what, many things have changed.

My each single day here at the Unreasonable Institute, haven't just been a day with mere mornings ending to nights, but every second has been an eternity and a life time for me where I have seen myself growing a deal. For many it may seem like just days of learning and mentorship and everything that's on the surface but you know dad for me each minute is very deep.... so much that I cant even explain. The first thing when I came here I started to measure the differences with these people in me... time came when I declared to myself that I did not belong here at all.

These people that surround me here are full of knowledge, wisdom, and capabilities that perhaps I have never had encountered before.... they talk about changing the world even when we are having our meals... its fully insane... and the power of all this have made me feel at lost many times. There have been times when I have cried because of the differences within me and them... you know I would walk up to the big dinning hall even for a drink of water, I would see fellows talking to each other, discussing, learning, debating, being positively critical and building on their ventures but you know...that is the time I feel like sinking... I know you haven't deprived me of anything ever... you have given me a life which was different in any aspect from what other girls in our family or society could have... I have the most fortunate one to have all that dad but then again these differences here have been killing me until.........until today, this morning when I was walking out of the house in the front garden, Bob Patillo, one of our great mentors was standing at the door and ushered me towards him. I went up to him to find out he was moved with emotions, and as usual the sight of deep feelings was strong enough for me to even say a word and I stood there with my face down as he spoke....

He told me he had been talking to Maria (my roommate), and how she had mentioned me in her talk and talked about our times together, about being fortunate to have me as her roommate, about never forgetting the time I made her stand in the rain and feel God in in each rain drop and you know what dad, in the end Maria had told Bob that she is going to name her child after me......It was too much for me to hear, I couldn't hide the tears that flowed up to my eyes with sudden urge to free themselves of a place which hid them always... I had been wrong about many things dad... I had been wrong about being different as a bad thing when all this respect was showered upon me each time I looked towards everyone...

Every single one of the fellows, Unreasonable team, the mentors and all the supporters have seen my differences as not a weakness but a beautiful asset... these people are the entrepreneurs dad, they are capable of making the change happen with their positive thinking while there I was, assuming myself as an alien and have tried to keep away from being part of this great world...... but not any more dad. I have learned so much in the past 20 days, this Institute have taught me many things, too much that I cant even put in numbers, but above all it has shifted my Paradigm. My life's most unbearable reality is changed to one of the powerful strengths of mine, I have come to realize that we cannot judge people and ourselves of what we haven't been able to get, but what are we actually doing of all that we have, are we making the most of it?

Even though I hadn't ever had any experience like this before, no MBA, no business talks, no strategical development and all this but the fact is, I am having it now, Unreasonable Institute is offering all that to me. Everything that I haven't known in my life is here, in front of my eyes and for the next 7 weeks I am not going to mourn upon what I have been missing but would focus on making the most of each moment here. I am now working on the structure of Sughar, looking at its legal strengths, working on networking with organizations that would be eager to partner with us to help us replicate the idea or even be a part of the support network, working on establishing an advisory board of great people, searching for possible linkages that we have with the organizations our mentors are involved in, working on learning new strategies for team building from the Unreasonable team, contacting a lot of people for helping in connecting to others, finding new solutions to use in empowering women, working on media strategy of Sughar weighing risks and assumptions of security and how do we tackle them and above all dad, I am learning how to ride the bicycle, play volleyball, go hiking, playing frisby and play ultimate ping pong:)

I want you to know dad that I am really proud of everything, of all that surrounds me but most especially I am proud of YOU, I have always reminded myself of how much blessed I am and now when I celebrate all these blessings I keep you in my thoughts each single second, because there were times when I had held on your finger crossing the road, feeling proud and assured that you are there for me and now when I am on the other side of the world I know fully well dad, that you are there for me and there is nothing as powerful as that for me......Happy Fathers Day,

Your Daughter,
Khalida Brohi

That darkest night of Denver, plane landing to a place I had never seen before … I had many fears packed with me along my luggage… first ever time with the longest trip outside Pakistan, with people I didn’t at all knew… the name of the Institute with the word “Unreasonable”… It couldn’t have been crazier.

Before applying I had perhaps never realized about the nagging questions like how would I embrace a new world when my part of the world was overwhelmingly different? But yeah… thinking or not…I was here, with my bags clutched tightly and feeling the sudden cold of Colorado, I was making my way out of the airport towards the “Mansion” where I would spend 10 weeks with worlds most inspiring, high impact entrepreneurs… I am crazy.

Sitting down on the sofa at the Mansion, having my first glass of water in Boulder, I had dreaded the first ever moment I came in… how would it all be like? How would I ever be able to cope with the differences and am I going to take back all what I aim to do so….?

But now, I am sitting on that very sofa, looking around myself as a bunch of fellows, mentors and unreasonable team sitting, talking, working around the huge room…I feel like nothing could have been more perfect. It is perfect when I look around and find the gaze of Jasmine and we smile to each other, it is perfect now as Teju and Jehan are hugging and laughing, it is just so perfect as Maria and Benjamin are deep in discussion about new strategies in their work…… I am at home.

Its been one week, first of the 10 week and 9 to go. These 7 days have just been amazing… so much of learning! Overload of information. Overdose of excitement and like Guido says overdose of Awesomeness! The week was packed with mentor sessions, office hours, opening reception, and peer education in many” Unreasonable” ways.

Kerry Suddes was our first mentor, who had the greatest power to shift us from for-profit, non-profit to for-impact model of our ventures, where our core intuition is not to think what the organization is, but what it does to “impact lives”.

Bob Patillo, who shifted my whole paradigm of typical investors, from those of critical to out-of-the box thinkers, he can tell a person to exactly relate to the issues we are working on. His passion towards our work was just amazing and unbelievably so engaged.

Scott Sherman, Focusing on Networking and solving conflicts, which to some of us is the main problems we face in our ventures. He has an amazing spirit and passion towards what he does which set us up with great enthusiasm about our approaches.

Paul Polak, We had a deep discussion on how profit to some problems became the only way to solve some issues around the world: 30 minutes with Paul Polak.

Rayn Fix: The deep discussion and talks with Rayn proved to us all about how he engages himself to look at the human part of entrepreneurship, which in certain conditions is forgotten. Ryan is kind of a person who can take you from business thinking to results that make lives simple

Ross Baird, An amazing two hours session on Village Capital investment in the Unreasonable Institute! We couldn’t have been more excited.
Joy Anderson: Joy didn’t expect so many hands to be raised when she asked if we wanted office hours to discuss legal structures of our ventures. The whole room had gone wild, and our office hours ran for-ever. Joy made it very clear about the structure we could develop and the legal advice from her was something that Sughar and others perhaps needed the most.
Pamela Hawely, She would smile at you the first minute to warm the room, and she did. Her session was amazing about the
Yesterday it was Revi Sterling, the energetic,

These were the mentors, but the huge amount of learning and sharing that came in between is something hard to put in words, for me it’s been a great transformation of myself where I am visibly seeing myself growing each second of my time surrounded by powerful force for change.

Little things among all have been the tremendous importance to me and now when my feet feel sore, my back ache’s, my head swings with overload and my heart beats with excitement, I recall the volley ball, trmipuline, vanilla ice cream, huge slides, creek festival, Celebrations, American food, water rafting, using silverware, walking that broke all my previous records, speaking English constantly, Pictionary, scramble, University of Colorado, the word “Unreasonable”, dogs with each walking person, swearing during volleyball and every other little thing with a big difference, I say good bye to the first week of the first ever Unreasonable Institute! I am not sure if I am sad to let the first 7 days to pass or excited tomorrow I wake up with this amazing environment of Unreasonable way of learning.

So it's Etan's birthday tomorrow  - we were thinking of doing something for him given his awesomeness. The current plan is:

Make Aton breakfast. Jasmine is in charge of this.

I'll sort out getting a birthday cake for him to bring out after dinner. It would be nice to cook it, but I don't think we could pull it off without disrupting his chefly duties.

What do you guys think?

Happy to take suggestions too!

Jehan

 

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I have two suggestions for cake: 

1- I have a good carrot cake recipe

2- Dominican birthday cake.

That is all.

 

Emily Kerr

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So should i call this friend, her name is Cassidy, and ask her to get Etan out of the way?

 

Trina

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And so plans went on and on, we were all delighted to see the enthusiasm and team work coming along and the group responded so well it was very amazing, until..................the following email showed up from that mailing list....

sincerely 

le chef

you guys are too nice

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And thus, you can imagine what the other emails were like...  

 

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!

When I set foot in Boulder, Colorado it was past midnight and my expectations about having to look at this place after hearing so much about it washed out as I was driven off from the Airport to the valley-type city of Boulder. Black shadows of huge mountains showed in the dark of the night and the glimmering lights welcoming me in this city was perhaps worth all that I missed...until the next day I dismissed the thought. I had surely missed the most beautiful welcome on this earth.

Pure green and thick grass softly danced and the wind slowly blowing upon it while the sky with its deepest blue smiled down the tall proud mountains of Boulder said this is what you missed.

There could never have been a better time for me to go explore, if it wasnt me, anyone would have done the same thing. Walking down the road surroudning by a jungle of trees and grass that spread to everywhere I could see,  my feet slowly touching the road creating the only sound and still not being able to budge the silence that was breathtaking, However off all this, I was sure for one thing, "Nature was at work". Nature during its silent moments was working with its all strength, thats what my eyes saw with the green of the grass and the blue of the sky, my ears heard the chirps of squirls and whoosh of the wind that would come teasing a tree or tickling the grass.... I watched and I felt Nature, so close and so honestly pure and serene it took me back to my identity....

Reminding me about my being a part of this whole circle of life... reminding me of the reasons each living being is born in this world... the reason to serve. Thats what nature was doing, serving with its beautiful peace and making each one of us realize that the whole circle of life is connected somewhere and sometimes if you listen.... you would hear the silence.... that is where Nature trully is and that is where you are... Nature says find that silence and come feel me so you could find "yourself".

"The Silence Within Me"

Do you know what Nature is whispering
Do you know what it says to me
It tells me there are people who
fight for reasons and identity

People seeking truth and purpose
They should come and learn from me
This wind is what you live alike
Even the rock and this tree

Slowly nature speaks it all
About you, me and this humanity
It tells me something I dont deny
Of the times I lose contact within me

When I know my existence
and yet I lose my identity
Then is when it talks to me
Its says listen, listen to me

I hear it yes
I listen carefully
I hear it says
Silence.....

Silence.....
Silence.....
That is whats missing in me
I need to stop, think and feel
everything that is surrounding me
Nature at its work
Silently

I close my eyes, while wind is whoosing
while grass is dancing
while sky is smiling
while trees are saying
Listen
Listen to me...


And I do hear,
"The Silence within me"

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.

Zar Gul, a 55 year old indigenous woman and mother of 7 children belongs to a small village of Union Council Pashta Khan of District Khuzdar. 

Zar Gul is one of the unfortunate victims of unexpected flash floods of recent past in the “drought hit” areas of Mountains of Moolla, District Khuzdar, When the sudden waves broke into the small village in the deep of night and took away with them great property, human lives including the 5 children of Zar Gul who were deep in slumber when disaster struck.

“It isn’t like we never faced floods before, but we have always relied with the core of our hearts on the traditional predictions that told us when to move up to the mountain tops with our family and sheep before any floods did came”. Says Zar Gul

The community like other surrounding communities of the district follows traditional practices of living, Medicines usually come from shrubs which are prepared in a certain way to cure even worse kind of infections and illness, weather predictions and seasons of cropping and harvesting are predicted by the indigenous wise people who have lived their whole lives in these mountains.

However most unfortunately at present when not only natural disasters are coming unpredicted the traditional pattern of cultivating land is also at great risks in Balohcistan, where the province mainly relies on “Khuskaba” and “Sailaba” patterns of land cultivation. The people in the upper areas usually wait for rainy seasons and work hard the whole year in preparing the land until rain falls on time, while people in the low lands prepare their lands to wait for floods to use water for cropping. These patterns have severely been under risk as rains show up right in the times of harvesting, or while crops are in the time of blossoming.
“Its all revenge of Allah that fells upon us”, Says one of the neighbors of Zar Gul, “our sins hold so much weight to let us face these horrible disasters and rain when we don’t even want it”.

 Sughar a civil society organization from District Khuzdar have been working with these communities to raise awareness about Climate Change which to them is “God’s revenge”, the organization have been influencing the people to do their share of mitigating or adapting to the new patterns, and while helping them to cope Sughar have provided Alterative livelihood measures in the form of 5 goats to each poorest of poor women and Embroidery Centers to help sell their traditional products in the huge markets around Pakistan and abroad.


Climate Change in Balochistan came as unconsciously as these floods that cost many lives, the province already facing severe droughts and harsh weather had seen drastic changes in the climate pattern from the very beginning of the century.

And while work is in progress, the faith of these people keeps lessening day by day on the traditional practices, which being a challenge for them locally is also a great challenge to the whole world and to its massive diversity including the very truth that the world is getting short on its most important as well as reliable source of knowledge and wisdom.

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The above case study is a part of my Climate Change Awareness-Visit to almost all of the villages in District Khuzdar as a part of the The Climate Project (TCP) and Australian Conservation Foundations (ACF) Presenter activity and Sughar’s Reclaiming our Climate Campaign. I am proud to share that I also belong to a small community of Khuzdar and am most pleased to share this case study and open to any ideas and comments that come on my way.

With Respect,

Khalida Brohi
Sughar Pakistan-