Vandy Faces: Mahir Sheikh Nisar fights for Pakistan's future
Aaron Kraft
Editor-in-Chief
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Mahir Sheikh Nisar, a senior political science major, helped found and serves as the secretary of an international charitable awareness organization called Future Leaders of Pakistan (FLP). He and eight other Pakistani citizens around the world created FLP as a leadership initiative to create a tolerant, progressive and merit-based society within Pakistan. The other founders hail from such places as Islamabad, Karachi and England. Most recently, Mahir traveled with representatives from his organization to Washington, DC where they met with the American ambassador to Pakistan to lobby for the rights of rape victims.
Mahir grew up in Lahore, in the province of Punjab, about 50km from the border of India. While he received most of his education in Pakistan, he also lived in New York for close to four years. Initially, Mahir attended Rutgers University in New Jersey on a tennis scholarship, but after suffering a back injury, he decided to re-focus his priorities and spend more time on his academics. Recognizing that a number of Pakistani government officials had attended Vanderbilt, he decided to give the university a closer look. A number of Vanderbilt grads are currently in the Pakistani Senate and ministry directors.
Before entering college, Mahir took a year off to trek around Pakistan and around the world. In his travels, he thought a great deal about the power of youth leadership in Pakistan. He felt the government lacked leadership, was plagued by political instability and that feudal lords were wresting away too much power. He decided there needed to be a leadership movement on the basis of merit.
Membership in FLP is diverse but rather selective. The organization has received many applications that they have had to turn down. Mahir relates that "everyone wants to be a leader and thinks things are wrong." The criteria for membership demands experience in a wide array of expertise, ranging from photography to journalism. Mahir and the other founders hope to pool these resources in order to produce future leaders, organize and create lobbying power and evoke political activism. FLP primarily funds itself and prefers not to affiliate with any other organization. According to Mahir, "our credibility comes from the people."
Two movements that Mahir has stood behind are ?Vote Pakistan' (creating activism through voting) and ?Parliament Watch' (monitoring parliamentary actions). With regard to voting, Mahir notes that "people don't know they have the right to vote, where to vote or even when."
Within the next five years, Mahir plans on starting a political party in Pakistan. His plan is to enter politics in Pakistan because "we know what people need and want ? I have the full intention of going to work in government and hopefully getting all the way to the top." For right now, he is busy trying to start a Future Leaders of Pakistan chapter system at schools in Pakistan.