Advocacy, Passion & Beyond: Voices from the SI Leader Lab

In this episode, host Japleen Pasricha talks to Sara El Outa and Ahmed Ben Nejma about changing minds and changing systems. 

Sara is a feminist, civil activist, and human rights defender from Lebanon, currently working as a Gender and Inclusion Technical Advisor at ASMAE and used to work as Project Coordinator at Plan International Lebanon for the She Leads Programme. She was elected as a board member of the Lebanese Women Democratic Gathering - RDFL. She is currently the Vice President of the Lebanon Alumni of Swedish Institute, and she is also one of the 2021 Young Peace Builders at UN Women.

To know more about Sara's work, check out:

In this episode, host Japleen Pasricha talks to Sonal Dhanani and Nesmah Mansoor about surviving from passion and creating resilience and healthy sustainability. 

Sonal Dhanani is an award winning women peace builder, mental health advocate, creative professional, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner and trauma-informed facilitator keen on promoting education, mental health initiatives and social action in Pakistan. Sonal was also the member of Pakistan’s first National youth Council by Prime Minister Imran Khan.

In this episode, host Japleen Pasricha talks to Noura Aljizawi and Hira Amjad about how to counter gender-based disinformation - and why it’s important for democracy.

Noura Aljizawi is a researcher at the Citizen Lab at Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. Her work takes an in-depth look at digital transnational repression, digital authoritarianism, human rights, and digital surveillance more broadly. In addition to her research at the University of Toronto, Noura is the Chairwoman of Start Point, a nonprofit organization that works on human rights and gender in the course of the conflict in Syria, she serves as a board member of the Center of Victims on Torture CVT.

Co-Founder and Executive Director, ‘DASTAK Foundation’, Hira Amjad has been working to eradicate gender-based violence and to promote women rights across Pakistan since 2014. She specializes in the development and execution of grassroots level community engagement, awareness raising and social mobilization projects. Hira has worked with women and young girls across Pakistan, including those residing in various districts of former war-torn Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on projects supported by the US Embassy, British High Commission, USIP, UNDP etc.

Find more about Citizen Lab at Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy here:

In this episode, host Japleen Pasricha talks about how powerful stories can mobilise and create change. The two guests for the episode are Anna Susarenco from Moldova and Srishti Bakshi from India. 

Anna founded an international youth network within the UN and one of the largest peer to peer education networks nationally, she has developed guides about youth advocacy tools, facilitated tonnes of workshops, done community organising and so much more. 

While Srishti embarked on a 3800 km on-foot journey across India from Kanyakumari in the South to Kashmir in the North to understand and end gender-based violence. She met with 100,000 women on her journey, talked to them about gender-based violence and now has created a documentary film, WOMB: Women Of My Billion.