Over the past several years I’ve done a lot of public speaking around the US, among both Pakistanis and mainstream Americans. A very special event at the Islamic Association of Greater Detroit in January 2010 was seminal for me, because it was there that it dawned on me just how great an asset the younger generation of the Pakistani-American community is becoming for both countries. I was so moved by the efforts and accomplishments of the young volunteers in Michigan (more on them in another column) that I felt compelled to include in my speech this line: “We all know that America is a nation of immigrants. As an American whose ancestors came here in the 19th century from Ireland and Germany and France, I want to thank you for contributing not only your talents and material resources, but also your impressive children, to help build a new, improved America in the 21st century.”

Detroit was my first opportunity to say that, but far from the last. And America’s gain doesn’t have to be Pakistan’s loss. We have many reasons these days to despair of both America and Pakistan, but the university-age generation of Muslim Americans is not one of them. Far from it.

And, in fairness and truth, it’s not only young Muslims. May 19-21, I was asked to speak and help judge a competition at a student-run conference at the University of Chicago called RISE Pakistan. RISE stands for Road to Innovative Social Entrepreneurship, and the conference was conceived by Pakistani and other students as a way to encourage and help fund and implement effective long-term responses to last year’s severe flooding. With sponsorship from corporate and private donors, and with the Chicago-based Pakistani nonprofit Human Development Foundation as its implementation partner, RISE Pakistan was able to offer a grant of $10,000 to the team that submitted the winning project.

Student teams from universities around the US and even Europe took part, and most of the participants were anything but Pakistani. The team that won, with a project for local production to help local economies and inspire youth in flood-affected areas, was from Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany. “The conversation is being extended because it’s being advertised on their website,” says David Akinin, one of RISE Pakistan’s student co-directors, with satisfaction. “This German team is actually going to fly to Pakistan at some point to see it implemented.” (The second-place team, Team VOWS from Sarah Lawrence College and New York University, is so motivated and enthusiastic that they plan to pursue their project anyway. They hope to “connect existing local artisans to American markets via college book stores, local businesses and department stores,” according to team member Jackie Assar.)   David Akinin himself became involved in RISE Pakistan because, he says, “I was approached. In my university community, first of all, there were people caring about this issue, that thought I could help. I was very inspired, and I was very excited.”   “We always talk about, ‘Has the world community been responsive enough?’” he says. “And here you have all these young people interested in impacting the world, and at the same time we’re aspiring entrepreneurs. And we managed to put through in about eight months that it was not about us, it was about what we wanted to accomplish.”   RISE Pakistan’s other co-director, Aliya Bagewadi, is currently studying abroad in Israel and Palestine but flew all the way back to Chicago for just three days, to see the fruition of the vision she helped conceive. Aliya grew up in Chicago, and her parents are Muslims from South India. “I believe in RISE and felt it so important to come back to witness the competition because of the potential I see in the project,” she says. “It is a project which hopes to cultivate a greater sense of ourselves, or our generation, as global citizens.”   David echoes the sentiment. “I’m Jewish,” he told me, “and I grew up in a very traditional community in Venezuela. I’m trying to create collaborations amongst all religions.” But he makes an important distinction: “I’m not trying to do interfaith dialogue. I was trying to show the world that we could work together. They actually approached me to ask if we could work together, knowing that I’m Jewish. At least I showed a few people on our campus that we can work together. In the end we all come from the same place and our world needs help everywhere.”   “If there’s anything I hope people take away from this project,” Aliya told me after the conference in an email from Jerusalem, “it is that young people not only hold enormous potential to envision a world in which members of developed and developing nations collaborate to help one another, but young people also have the means and ability to make such a world a reality. Our first step is simply to rise to the challenge.”   I find Aliya’s last quoted sentence above the most stirring. Knowing the size and complexity of the problems we face doesn’t entitle us to despair or to feel daunted, and the first thing we must do is acknowledge that we’re all in the same boat. If young people like Aliya and David and the other RISE Pakistan board members and participants – who will live deeper into this daunting century than their elders will – are ready to work together and rise to the challenge, then so can we.

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