Mina Zamand

Pakistan

Economics for Development (MSc), 2016
Worcester College, Oxford

Funding: Oxford-Weidenfeld and Hoffmann

Mina aspires to make a lasting contribution to reducing child poverty and empowering women in the developing world. After graduating from Oxford, she returned to Pakistan to work on various social protection initiatives, including developing complementary initiatives under Pakistan’s flagship cash transfer programme BISP, targeted exclusively at women from the lowest income group. She also works on a programme facilitating the rehabilitation and development of livelihood strategies for temporarily displaced people in conflict-affected tribal areas of Pakistan. Additionally, she’s involved in developing social safety systems at the provincial level and health and nutrition enhancing projects for pregnant women and children in lower income groups.

Her research on childhood poverty and vulnerability in the face of climatic shocks has been published in Environmental Hazards, as well as the Young Lives Papers. She has organized aid efforts and facilitated victim rehabilitation in flood and earthquake relief programmes, as well as spearheaded a successful campaign to secure funds for the rebuilding of a school for girls, destroyed in a terrorist blast.

Mina also co-founded Boston-Mills, an international company specializing in hand-made furniture. Her vision is to preserve an age-old craft and give Pakistani artisans a chance to continue with time-honored methods of furniture manufacturing and sustain their livelihoods and craft.