Support Yasmin

My friend, Megan, is working to help her former student, Yasmin, to attend the Global Youth Leadership Summit Conference in San Diego this July. I'm very grateful for my education, and happy to help support Yasmin and her classmate in pursuing theirs. If you would like to help too, you can donate at Support Yasmin.

"Last year, I had the privilege and honor to work with some very talented young people during my time in India with the Parikrma Humanity Foundation. Last week one of my closest students, Yasmin, was one of two girls chosen to attend the Global Youth Leadership Summit Conference this July in San Diego, California. Yasmin helped me form Parikrma's first girls soccer team, a challenging feat amidst a male dominated sports culture. The girls had sat on the sidelines watching boys play their whole life; this team gave them a chance to not exactly even the playing field, but at least step out onto it for the first time. Yasmin demonstrated clear leadership during practices and I'm sure the people who chose her to attend this conference recognized the same innate qualities I saw.


Yasmin lives in a one room tin home in one of the many overpopulated urban slum areas of Bangalore. After many months of time spent together, she revealed to me that if she didn't participate in soccer practice, she would be confined to her home after school because of the dangers of her neighborhood. Yasmin has never left India, rarely ever ventured outside of Bangalore, and has spent a vast majority of her life in that house.


Nevertheless, Yasmin would ask me endless questions about the world, the continents, and the age a woman is required to marry in my country. She had some of the most insightful, open-minded commentary on religion,race, and womanhood that I have ever heard from a fourteen year old, regardless of her limited experience. She is, contrary to our stereotype of early teenagers, wise beyond her years and speaks freely in a society that does not always accept this from a young Islamic girl. I once heard her lecturing a peer, "Just because we live in a slum does not mean we will act like slum girls, and it is not an excuse for us to be less than the women we are made to be".


Can you imagine what this natural poise could accomplish if paired with opportunity?


All Yasmin needs now is a passport, visa, and travel items to get her to San Diego. Six hundred dollars will cover all her travel expenses outside of airfare (which will be provided through an Anthony Robbins Foundation scholarship!). Twelve Hundred dollars will cover these costs for Yasmin and Chaithra, her classmate. These costs include a trek to Chennai where India requires the girls to have their face-to-face interview for visa permission.


MESH is supporting these girls, and if you'd like to help us help them get their passports and broaden their worlds, I have set up a donation site here : Support Yasmin!"

-Megan Bullock, MESH Design and Development