TED Community » Asher Hasan

More About Me

I'm passionate about

NAYA JEEVAN, the emerging world’s first “HMO for the Marginalized”, a social enterprise that provides low-income families in the emerging world with affordable access to quality healthcare.

An idea worth spreading

While infant-child mortality rates in Pakistan and India remain unacceptably high, the ‘indentured’ children that survive often serve as child-labor in quasi-apprenticeship roles, deprived of formal primary education and quality healthcare and exposed to violence, drug abuse, trafficking and prostitution. One of the primary causes of this child bondage is a financially devastating, catastrophic medical event that incapacitates the primary breadwinner of the family.

Languishing in menial jobs, the spirit of these 'lost generation' of children is often extinguished at an early age. Many of these children are incredibly talented - yet that talent is systematically crushed through the knowledge that they must fend for themswithout any safety nets or access to quality primary or tertiary healthcare as they consign their lives to oblivion.

NAYA JEEVAN (http://www.njfk.org) was created to fill this gaping void in their lives.

Talk to me about

celestial twins, the bright side of the moon and social entrepreneurship

People don't know that I'm good at

Tiddlywinks, shower-singing and leaving toothpaste tubes uncapped.

My TED Story

Allow me to tell you a short story about a young woman called Raabia. The first time I met Raabia was at the tender age of 14 when she was an 8th grader, effervescent and full of zest and optimism for the future. Tragically, Raabia became her family’s primary breadwinner at the age of 19 when her father, a sedentary man with chronic, debilitating, high blood pressure, suffered a massive stroke, became paralyzed and therefore was no longer able to provide for his family. As a consequence, Raabia and her six siblings were forced to drop out of school and enter the urban child labor market. There are millions of Raabia’s and Maria’s throughout Pakistan and in many other countries throughout the emerging world. Their stories remain unheard of and untold. They symbolize the anonymous, countless children whose dreams are shattered on the altar of poverty.

Comments

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• A comment on Talk: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy: Inside a school for suicide bombers

  May 26 2010: Sharmeen: Thanks for bringing this important issue to the TED stage. It is instructive to note that the extremist indoctrination that you highlight proliferates in an 'agar gel' of ignorance, socioeconomic apartheid and despair. The Taliban and other radical movements exploit the socio-economic fragility of their recruits. Therefore, it is imperative for those of us who want to live in a prosperous, culturally diverse and interconnected world that we provide an alternative pathway for the hundreds of millions of 'disempowered' people trapped in poverty. This must be a pathway laden with hope, opportunity and dignity. Only then, will be begin to change the hearts and minds of the disillusioned.