Socio-Development Leadership Day 5

Day 5 Socio-Development Leadership

We woke up at 8 and had our breakfast till 9 at Sheraton Poolside. All the participants made their way towards backside of Sheraton. There a huge Air Conditioned Tent was arranged as an alternative to the Sheraton Ball Rooms. At first i thought we are going to rot in the heat. But i must give credit to the YLC management for arranging such a unique setting of Tents with Two Cool Point AC's.

A guy from the Entertainment Industry was standing in front of us on Stage. I did not know him. Until it was announced that he is the Director/Producer of Pakistani Movie "Ram Chand Pakistani". To this point i havent seen the movie but i am planning to watch it someday. Yes, the elderly fellow was Javed Jabbar. The Presentation of Mr. Jabbar was very philosophical and deep, much of it went through our heads but we got the essence of what he was talking about. The Topic was Believe in Alternative World. Now it was upto the listener from which angle he/she takes it. It can mean to Believe in life after death and work hard to get the rewards. It can also mean the unique destiny that is waiting for Pakistan to be fullfilled. Pakistan can rise a state inspite of all the current hurdles in its way. That was the main essense of his talk.

After a short break, Alumni of YLC were invited to come on stage. There were five YLcians. But the ones who stood out for me were Farhan Ali Jamali of Azm-e-Nojawan, Nauman Aman of IM|Sciences and Ammara the girl who was visually impared. They all have done some amazing things in their capacity for the sociodevelopment of the community.

Farhan is from Nawabshah and started his own campaign of Azm-e-Nojawan to follow the footsteps of YLC. He has been working for past few years in waking up the youth of Nawabshah by organizing conferences, seminars and public talks etc.

Nauman Aman, the gem of IM|Sciences, never had an opportunity to attend YLC as a participant. But he attended YLC 2010 as a YF. He also has done TTYT and is a certified trainer. He is a born Enterpreneur and believes in earning money for himself. He has a company by the name of Outlinkx Outsourcing which provides foreign organizations with Raw, Young and Competent Human Resources. Nauman also believes in Leadership and Helping Others thats why he never miss an opportunity to grab the mic and be on Stage.

The girl who took every one by storm due to her accomplishment was Ammara. She is Visually Impared. She organized a campaign for Visually impared in her hometown to empower them. It was like a mini YLC for them. It was really heart touching for us to see someone helping people like her with such passion and determination.

All of us know who Kambha is. But not alot of us know who he really is. After 5 full days there were participants who did not know Kamran Rizvi that well. They wanted to know him. So their long wait came to an end and Kambha decided to share his lifestory with us. Kambha did his Matric from a Pakistani School in 1972. After that he moved to England along with his family. He worked for a bank there in 1976 for 11 years. After that he did his MBA in Organization Development from University of Strathclyde, Scotland. He said he was not that of bright student. He failed alot of times in his school and college days. He said he even attempted to jump of the rooftop because of his grades but luckliy he was a coward too. Which saved his life and for which he was thankful to Allah. Kamran Rizvi Career took larger strides when he came back to Pakistan in 1991 and founded KZR, organization dedicated to Organization Development Issues. It later Spawned Navitus and School of Leadership. He is the founding Director at SOL and is also the Director at Navitus.

The only Differently-Abled Speaker who impressed me was Sarmad Tariq. Sarmad Tariq is paralyzed waist way down and uses an electrical wheelchair. He called himself Differently Abled because he does not like calling himself Disabled. Sarmad got paralyzed in his teens when he was 14. He hit a rock in the water when he dived into the pool. He was hospitalized for a long time and was in comma. Later when he got his senses back he could only use his upper body muscles. Inspite of all his hardships, Sarmad didnt loose hope. He strived to live a normal life. He married to the girl who he liked, travelled by car from Khyber Pass to Karachi as a challenge, participated in Newyork Marathon and wrote a humours book, "Natural Gases", which would be published soon. Sarmad is very confident, self satisfied, praise worthy person. He calls himself of being Narscisst who is living days of his life by being acknowledged and recognized by people.

Sarmad ended his talk on a wonderful lesson to all of us. He asked us to stand and clap for him. At first we thought of it as very rude and narscisstic to ask your audience to stand for you, after all we had given him two standing owations already. But we saw the beauty of his request when he said that you guys can stand and i can't so be very thankful to your Creator.

Shireen Naqvi came to the stage after the "Chairman" of Pakistan, Mr. Sarmad Tariq. Shireen aka "Sheepa" is the CEO of School of Leadership and senior consultant at Navitus. She has done MBA from IBA. She has organized YLC 2002-2006. She happened to share her Life Story in hopes of inspiring us and indeed she inspired us. The women was so skilled at moving hearts. She knew exactly what to say at a given moment.  She told us that when she was young and living with her parents in Peshawar, she did not have new clothes and shoes to wear every now and then like other rich  kids of the community. She had a tough life but she did not give up. The Strength of her Spirit is the testimony to the fact that she has not only change her life but is on a huge of mission helping people realize their latent Potential. She believes in diversity. She has travelled far and wide and has met different kinds of people. She understands the human soul very well. She is Empathetic to the point of downright Inspiring.

Sheepa gave us an activity. It comprised of writing our Biggest Fear, Shame and Guilt on Piece of Paper. We had to tie it with thread of balloons and watch it disappear in the sky. All of us had to performa this activity with our team mates. We felt a sense of unity after performing this activity. Later on we share our fears, shame and guilt with our friends and felt accepted. We developed empathy for eachother. Few of the members even cried sharing their fears. We consolidated them. The bond between our team mates became stronger than ever. I never thought that such a simple activity like that can have such a great impact on us.

When every one had done their activity. We were asked to go to Poolside for dinner. We had our dinner along with small chit chats to share our experiences.

Our last session of the Day was with Umair Jalialwal. The topic of his session was Dastaan-e-Ishq. It was a Sofi-Songs-Sing-Along Session. The essence of this session was to remind us of our rich Urdu literature and poetry. Likes of Baba Bhulay Shah and Arif Lohar were highlighted. The depth of their poetry was indeed outstanding along with their message. People were singing to their poetry. Especially the song of Arif Lohar, "Jugni".

Before going to bed we were briefed for the final day's plans. We were asked to have breakfast from 8AM to 9AM and to Pack our belongings from 9AM to 10AM and do the CheckOut. We were asked to bring our luggages to the tent at the parking so we can easily move out of the Backgate. Then we were told  about the Optional Rang De activity. Everyone was free to wheather participate or not to. The objective of the game was to color other participants with solid and liquid colors.