Society’s key players come together to share ‘ideas worth spreading’

Eclectic mix of speakers recount stories of overcoming challenges.

KARACHI:

Some of the brightest and creative people working in education, fashion industry and technology combined forces in front of a live audience at DHA Suffa University on Saturday to narrate “ideas worth spreading” at the institution’s first-ever TEDx event.

TED - an acronym for technology, entertainment and design - is a US-based non-profit foundation that is best known since 1984 for its conferences under the moniker “ideas worth spreading”. The lectures, called TED talks, were released online at the official website, rapidly attracting a global audience in the millions and providing access to the world’s most inspiring voices.

At the conference, Prof. Dr Athar Mahboob, dean of the university, welcomed the eclectic mix of speakers.

Nazma Athar, shared horrors of being an Urdu teacher at the Karachi Grammar School (KGS). Athar, the great-granddaughter of famous Urdu writer and scholar, Deputy Nazir Ahmad Dehlvi, now is an educationist with 48 years of experience who authored a series of Urdu textbooks, specifically for Cambridge system students, which became part of the syllabus of a number of schools in Pakistan and beyond. Her conceived textbooks were published by the Oxford University Press.

Athar was teaching English and Social Studies at the Civil Aviation Authority School, when she was approached by a former KGS principal to teach Urdu to her students, stating that they were unable to perform well in the subject.



“The students I met attempted to talk in Urdu only when they had to say something to their servants and same was the worth of an Urdu teacher in their eyes. So, when I joined, nobody paid attention to me as if they had put me in their ignore-list,” recalled a smiling Athar.

Her perseverance to achieve the purpose for which she was brought in, however, led her on a tough journey of 16 years during which she introduced inventive methods of teaching Urdu to the students via flash cards, jigsaw puzzles and the story-telling in a way that linked Urdu with the topics in rest of the subjects that students used to study.  Along with respect for students, her methods over a period of time unified in a series of six textbooks.

Deepak Perwani, a fashion designer since 1994 whose work has brought him fame not only in Pakistan but abroad, shared his success story. “If Pakistan was not a market which has potential in terms of ideas, sales and innovation, why would international markets walk into the country?,” he asked. “At present, we have flagship stores and outlets of major international brand in the country. And this is not limited to fashion but hundreds of other things.”

Other TEDx talkers at the conference included Kachee Goliyan, a group of two creative individuals who have launched the first ever Urdu Pakistani comic book series and Maliha Abidi, a Pakistani American who is a self-taught artist and photographer as well as a youth director for a drug abuse company.

Syed Muhammad Fahim, assistant professor at the university, told The Express Tribune that the DHA Suffa University had become Karachi’s third educational institution, after Aga Khan University and PAF Karachi Institute of Economics & Technology, to hold a licence for organising TEDx events.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 16^th, 2013.