Tanzila Khan: incapacity rights campaigner tells younger ladies ‘the world is yours’ | World growth

Tanzila Khan doesn't like individuals feeling too sorry for themselves – or for her.

“I don’t like sob stories or tragedies,” mentioned Khan, who's a incapacity and girls’s rights campaigner in Pakistan. “I’m not saying they don’t exist – we can all face adversity – but I think we need a more positive approach to solving problems. I wanted to present people with disabilities in a more positive way.

“When I looked at the world, I didn’t see a space for myself. Not in TV series, not when I read a book … there was nobody who represented people with disabilities. I decided, ‘I’m going to create that space.’”

Khan, 31, wrote a brief comedy movie, Fruit Chaat, addressing a few of the challenges she confronted rising up in Pakistan as a wheelchair-user. It touches on 4 features of life for a younger lady with disabilities: schooling, employment, entrepreneurship and love.

Impressed by her personal experiences, Khan mentioned the movie is related to many ladies.

“As soon as you start moving around the world, you face challenges. It’s difficult to find a school or a university that is wheelchair-friendly and has an elevator, so I had to pick the institution first, then my degree. Being yourself, out in the world, is the greatest accomplishment,” she mentioned.

Khan believes her messages resonate with a wider viewers when humour is added. “Tragedy and comedy always go hand in hand – and I choose to find comedy in every tragedy.”

Khan’s advocacy work round menstrual well being calls for a special tone: anger.

In Pakistan, Khan launched Girlythings.pk, delivering menstrual, reproductive well being and maternity merchandise to ladies anonymously.

“When we talk about Pakistan, it’s one country but there is a lot of diversity,” Khan mentioned. “There are a lot of women who are empowered and have agency – but in the same country, you can find women who have never left the house or gone to school, so there are challenges across those diversities. For many women who work and go to the office, companies don’t have access to menstrual care, so what does she have to do? She has to quit the meeting,” she mentioned. “It creates a barrier.”

Girlythings, she added, redresses imbalance. The response to those matters has, Khan mentioned, been “extremely welcoming”, with important help from Pakistani males. “It made me think: ‘Why haven’t we talked about this earlier?’ I’m only one person and I want to reach every corner, but this response makes me feel hopeful that our society is becoming very progressive.”

Final week, Khan was within the UK, selecting up her Amal Clooney Ladies’s Empowerment award as a part of the Prince’s Trust International awards ceremony. It has given her, she mentioned, much more motivation to proceed along with her advocacy work.

And her message to different younger ladies? “The world is yours. Whatever you want to do, just do it. Be bold. Step up and own it.”

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