Kosmos Global Ambassador Project

Hello,

I’m Shahzor Ali Memon. I’m just a typical teenager who has high hopes and new ideas to create a better world. I have been part of Kosmos for a year and my experience as a Kosmos Global Ambassador has been very enlightening in creating the peace process in my community. I thank the Kosmos community for making me part of their network and encouraging me to step forward to be a young changemaker.

This year, I was nominated for an N-Peace Award as one of the youngest persons working to create peace. Although it had an online voting process, the Kosmos family supported me a lot through the power of social media.

Belonging from a part of the world that is facing challenging times, I have always had the urge to be a peacemaker since a young age. I would volunteer with my parents in remote villages to support the widows and orphans. From those small experiences, I have grown up to expand my reach and services to as many people as possible. With busy schedules and hectic lifestyles, I managed to keep ‘volunteering’ a family thing for my family. Instead of planning to go to the movies this weekend or some other get-together, I would drag my parents to a local community that was in need of support.

I managed to do the same with my friends. It may seem very easy to do such projects, but it took a lot of hard work, patience, and experience for me to initiate a new project in each new setting. I travelled to different remote villages to mentor and counsel students on leadership, career counseling, and conflict resolution. With that, I have been an advocate for global issues faced by the world and have acted on emergent issues.

One of the milestone projects I did was in 2014 when I initiated crowdfunding for Thar people who were affected by famine. Along with my friends and in spite of security issues, I travelled to the Thar Desert, which runs along India and Pakistan, and distributed rations to all the needy children and families. We were able to feed a small village and that felt like the greatest achievement to see those children and families getting aid and spending some time with us.

There was another time, during the war on Palestine, when I initiated a protest with my friends to end the violence and war. Since schools and many institutions restricted me to fundraise through their bodies, I reached out to my friends and family members and did not give up. After having an adequate and generous amount, I visited more than 15 banks in my city for transacting donations to Palestinian Organizations and all of them refused me to send a transaction. They blocked it. I felt very depressed when I would see pictures of the war-affected people on my feed and hear back from my Palestinian friends about their loss and heartbreaking stories. Fortunately, one of my cousins came to visit me from Dubai and I was able to send the donations through his account to the organizations at the right time. Unexpectedly, I got more financial support and was able to send dresses and coloring books for children to the Red Cross in Palestine.

I discussed some of these projects so you can have a peek at what I have been through while working for peace. It took optimism, determination, and experience to create change.

This year, I have been fortunate to run my non-profit organization, Youth for Enlightenment and Welfare (YEW), after having waited for a whole year to turn 18 to legally register the organization. YEW is an organization that aims to promote leadership skills and civic participation to youth around the world. We have more than 100 ambassadors from 40+ countries, all running YEW chapters in their countries and creating wonderful changes within their communities. The main focus of YEW is on empowering youth to work on global issues and peace.

I call myself stronger today than yesterday because today I have an international team united with me to be problem solvers of global issues and take action towards them.