Maria Taqdees is our YES alumna (2004-2005). She belongs to a conservative tribal background surrounded by rigid cultural concepts about gender roles and discrimination. In her community, women are not allowed to access socio-culture activities. Considerably, growing up in such hardships and challenging environments she always dreamed of empowering youth, especially women.
In 2004, YES opportunity gave her a hope and way out to explore the world, which changed her narrative towards women empowerment, diversity, peace, and acceptance. During her exchange tenure with her family, she was able to experience two more religions other than Islam with her host family, where her host dad was Jewish, and her host mother was Christian. This led her to volunteer 20 hours of her time in the community church, where she was a member of the youth club in her host community.
Her biggest accomplishment as a YES alumna is founding the HunarGhar Welfare Organization which is working nonstop for the welfare of the community from underprivileged. Upon her return, she was married at the age of 17 and was brought into one of the most underdeveloped areas of Pakistan. With zero financial and emotional support, she was only left with her YES experience of leading a community, creative towards a problem, and serving the community. She ended up building her own organization to help other women in her area with similar sufferings. To establish HunarGhar she sold everything and bought her first computer and started educating women, youth, and transgenders. ‘YES’ experience helped her sustain herself during the worst days of her life. She learned that when life throws lemons at you, the best is to make lemonade out of it. ‘YES’ scholarship program was the turning period and unforgettable experience in her life which helped her become who she is today. Now she is running her own non-profit organization to empower women and youth, she is a certified Psychotherapist from CPCAB, and a certified trainer and mentorship officer for youth.
She has organized several winter drives to distribute warm clothes and blankets among different communities. Last year she started the campaign named ‘Adopt a Family’ through which they specifically helped all the single mothers and gave 5000 PKR to 15000 PKR to them which helped them pay their kids’ fees, medical bills, and house rent in some cases. This was the biggest fundraising activity through which she was able to raise around 2.7 million PKR and different people from different parts of the world came forward and adopted several families. In 2019 she won The Humanitarian Award from the American Council, US Embassy as an acknowledgment of her services to the community.
