Rising Featured Speakers

Whenever possible, we invite a guest speaker to Rising gatherings. Their stories are real;
the impact is powerful. Learn how you can host your own Rising home party with a featured
guest speaker.

These are just a few featured guests that have spoken at Rising home parties:

Nadia Hashimi – Afghanistan

Nadia talks about the challenges of being a woman in Afghanistan, despite the demise of the Taliban. She tells guests, “We are not ‘living' in Afghanistan. We're barely surviving.” In some areas of Afghanistan, when a woman becomes widowed, she may get sold if she's not considered attractive in appearance, and because 79 percent of Afghan women are illiterate, they are limited as to what they can do for income. Nadia helped Rising launch the Widow's Doll Project to provide a vital income for some of these unfortunate women. After 23 years of war, many Afghan men have been killed, leaving 2.5 million widows fighting to keep their children alive – 90 percent of Afghan widows have children. Craftmaking gives them a much needed chance to provide for their families.

Rajib Acharya – Nepal

Rajib explained to us how the people of his country get recruited for terrorism. Home party guests are often surprised to learn that it's primarily extreme poverty that motivates young men and women to sign on for terrorist activities. Often it's their only source of income. It was Rajib's hope to help more than 200 artisan families who are trying to make a living and avoid terrorist recruiters.

We are greatly saddened to have lost Rajib to cancer early in 2006. We are honored to have known him. His spirit lives on in our work, and within all of the others who work tirelessly to end suffering in the world.

Sheree Xavier – Sri Lanka

Sheree speaks about a crafts project she started to assist 200 war widows living in a village in the Eastern part of her country. These young women married the young men of the village with the hopes of circum-venting their arrests and possible disappearances (Sri Lanka was famous for extra judicial killing of men in the 90s). Marrying the men, however, did not help. The men were still taken away and murdered by the military. The goal of Sri Lankan War Widows Project is to increase the widows' income from $15 a month to $50 a month, which will help them to have three decent meals a day and a safe roof over their heads.

Rajib Acharya demonstrating the
singing bowl at a Rising home party