Ananke’s flagship training and mentoring program, Empower, has recently partnered with one of Pakistan’s leading education and development organizations, The Citizens Foundation (TCF) for its youth empowerment initiative. Selected fellows of the program will also take part in the upcoming Ananke Festival of Literature 2025, happening on April 29th – May 1st, 2025.
Selected fellows include:
Areesha Aslam
Asia Niaz
Ayesha Rao
Eman Roshan
Madiha Rasheed
Muskan Vijay (not part of TCF, selected separately)
Through the three and six months Empower Fellowship program, more than 100 girls from the Global South have been mentored and trained. The development initiative envisions to upskill women and girls ages between 18-50 years. Previous upskilling collaborations include partnerships with IBM, London School of Economics Think Tank JournalismAi, The Gender Security Project, WomeninTechPK, Digital Rights Pakistan, TreeHouse Consultancy, Media Matters From Democracy, Yoda Press and more. Experts and mentors include renowned journalists from Pakistan and India, technologists from Microsoft, IBM, UpWork, development champions from UN Women, Change.org, etc.
Talking about the collaboration, Muhammad Mashhood, Head of College, The Citizens Foundation College, remarked:”At TCF College, we believe in the power of education and mentorship to unlock the potential within every young individual. Our collaboration with Ananke’s Empower Program is a testament to our shared vision of equipping future leaders with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities they need to create meaningful change. We are incredibly proud to see our students step into this transformative experience, and we look forward to witnessing their growth as they engage in learning, leadership, and advocacy. Together, we are shaping a brighter future—one empowered voice at a time.”
The Citizens Foundation (TCF) is a professionally managed, non-profit organization set up in 1995 by a group of thought leaders who wanted to bring about positive social change through education. Thirty years later, TCF is now one of Pakistan’s leading organizations in the field of education for the less privileged. The Foundation envisions to remove barriers of class and privilege to make the citizens of Pakistan agents of positive change. With over 301,000 students and more than 2033 school units, the foundation caters to the most needy by embedding purpose-built schools in the heart of urban slums and rural communities; offering an all-female faculty and 50 percent female student gender ratio. The school offers high quality education and a holistic student and alumni support; thereby uplifting entire communities.
“Ananke’s vision is to initiate social impact and creating benchmarks for positive change. It is an enabling space where women and girls can access learning, opportunities, network with not just experts and thought-leaders belonging to different landscapes and sectors, they get cultivate friendships with individuals from all across the Global South and beyond. It builds their confidence and eventually they get to pay it forward by becoming trailblazing role models themselves. I am thrilled that we are partnering with one of the foremost organizations in Pakistan, The Citizen Foundation, that has been change-making for the last 30 years and is a symbol of positive change,” concluded Sabin Muzaffar, Ananke’s Founder.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
