When I was growing up in Bangladesh, my mother was very involved with the women’s rights movement in the country, and she would take me with her to all her activist events, often after school. Of course at the time I hated it and just wanted to hang out with my friends. But this early exposure to the world of women’s rights pretty much shaped who I am today.

I completed my BA from the University of Virginia, dipped my feet in the policy world of Washington after graduation, and then moved to Europe to pursue my other passion- learning languages. I spent a year in Italy studying Italian before going to England where I completed my MA in Gender and Development. I moved back to Washington DC in the Fall of 2007, and returned to the world of gender and policy. A large part of my job consists of monitoring and analyzing the impact of US foreign policy on the health and rights of women and girls in the “developing world”, as well as co-authoring language for key feminist legislation. I have been working in the field of women’s rights for almost eight years now.

I started this blog to demonstrate how investing in women holds the solutions to many of the challenges we face in the world today, from war, to climate change, to global food insecurity. I want the points I make in my own writing, and the points made by the community I hope to build through this blog, to illustrate women’s rights issues as something we all have a stake in, and for what they really are- human rights issues.

I also want to create a forum where we can hear what young people have to say about these issues and more. How are young people talking about politics? About development? What does the world look like through our lens, and what do we have to say about it?

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