‘Education is the necessary catalyst to promote change’
Second-year Commerce student Zareen Ali, fifth from left, with her sister Amena, a
2007 graduate of Marianopolis College, to her right, and their aunt and uncle and staff of
the school for which she's raising money.
For a student with high marks, Zareen Ali has some surprising things to say about studying. “You have to have some kind of a distraction from school,” says the Dean’s list student. “You can’t focus on your academics 24/7. An important part of being a student is to be involved in the community.”
And involved she is, from representing Marianopolis College at a number of events as a Silver Key ambassador to participating in several student clubs, including the Muslim Students’ Association and Crayons.
Her inspiration to start Crayons came last summer in Jaipur, India, where she met a woman named Shrimati Vimla Kumavah. “For the last eight years, she has single-handedly been running a school for over 80 underprivileged children,” explains Ali, a second-year Commerce student who grew up in Saint Laurent. “Aside from providing them with a formal education, she gives them uniforms, books and school supplies and she pays for the teacher salaries out of her own pocket. Meeting her solidified my belief that education is the necessary catalyst to promote socio-economic change in every strata of society.”
Through several campus events since the school year started, Ali has raised over $1,000 to create educational kits, including basic school supplies for children throughout the developing world.
The youngest of three sisters to attend Marianopolis, Ali hopes to study law or accounting next fall. Her sister Amena is studying law at the University of Ottawa. Next spring, her sister Maria is to graduate from medical school at the University of Montreal.
Zareen and Amena spent last summer at Abhilasha (“hope” in Hindi), a school for blind and handicapped children that their uncle Abdullah Yusuf Ali runs in Rajanandgaon. “My uncle is incredible,” she gushes. “He has been running the school for the past 15 years, providing for free everything for these children –food, clothing, boarding and an education.”
Not surprisingly, once she returned to Marianopolis, Ali began to help raise money for Abhilasha.
Between classes, she says, “My fondest memories of last summer are the monsoons with water up to my waist, taking the local second-class trains and buses, bargaining, my trip to the Taj Mahal but, above even the Taj Mahal, my time at my uncle’s school.
“To watch someone help others receive an education is amazing,” she says of him and Kumavah – echoing what many would say of her.
