Singh Nikita - Empowering Women

Saba Gul is an engineer turned entrepreneur with a passion for female education and empowerment. Born and brought up in Pakistan, she did her graduation and postgraduation from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She returned to Pakistan and founded Business and Life Skills School (BLISS), which is dedicated to lifting adolescent girls and their families out of poverty through education and entrepreneurship. BLISS helps girls who have dropped out of school to get their education and become financially independent. The BLISS model is based on getting girls back to school, turning classwork into income and providing compensation to girls for the time spent in school and away from labour. BLISS supplements the regular English, Urdu, science and maths curriculum with a one-hour skills class and lessons in entrepreneurship. The girls are trained to create, design and market beautiful, socially conscious handbags. These bags are then sold and generate profit. These profits not only fund their education but also provide savings for the community.

SABA GUL was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and spent most of her childhood in Abbottabad and Lahore. Her family was distinctly upper middle class, with both parents being successful career professionals in Pakistan. Her father started his career in the Pakistan Navy, then turned entrepreneur and thereafter held several senior management and board-level positions in large multinational corporations. Her mother was a gynaecologist with a distinctive career, who still did her best to serve the underprivileged patients who came to her, often treating them free of cost.

Saba was the second of four children. Right from an early age, she was very competitive and an extremely bright studentfrom the first year she entered school to the day of graduation, she was always the top ranker. It could not have been any other way, says Saba with a smile. I took great pride in being the best.

A somewhat strange occurrence was the fashion of her entry into school: she repeated first grade three times. Having been enrolled in the first grade at the exceptionally young age of two, the school thought it best to let her age catch up with her class. At the time, I had no idea I was being made to repeat. Perhaps I would be three years ahead in my life now if they hadnt noticed my age. Ha ha!

My father always wanted me to take up medicine, she recollects. But I had the freedom to explore, to read, to try different things. I had a very comfortable childhood I remember, my dream in those days was to be left for the whole day at the British Council Library. I loved the smell of books, old and new. I would devour all kinds of books there. My favourite author at the time was Enid Blyton the only thing I was upset with was they only allowed me to check out four books at a time!

All those Enid Blyton booksThe Famous Five, The Secret Seven and the likeand it was therefore no surprise that the young Saba decided that her career ahead lay as a detective!

While her elder sister went to medical school, she grew close to her two younger brothers, and the three of them would spend hours doing typical childhood things: playing video games for hours, playing cricket, which Saba was not particularly good at!

Having eventually grown out of her Famous-Five detective phase, she enrolled, on the recommendation of her father, for pre-med, with a clear path ahead to become a doctor, like her mother and elder sister. But, meanwhile, computers had caught the fancy of young Sabathis was the 90s, the age when the field was growing rapidly and anything seemed possible. At the very last minute, without telling my father, I applied for a bachelors degree in computer science, at MIT, no less. There was no preparation, no counsellingthere was no time!

Having started the process late, in September, Saba scrambled to fill in her applicationstatement of purpose and the worksby the December deadline.

Miraculously, she smiles, I got in I was alone at home when I received the news, and I was jumping up and down on the bed in happiness.