Hareem wants to heal people. That is where her story begins.
Through Sakina's lens, this photo essay follows a young girl from Machar Colony whose dream of entering the medical field is not just ambition — it is a calling rooted in empathy and the quiet conviction that she can make things better for the people around her.
First displayed at the WOW Festival and now here for the world to see.
📷 Photos by Sakina
Bezubaan Kahaniyan — Voiceless Stories from Machar Colony is developed under the WOW Pakistan Gender Based Creative Grants 2025–2026, implemented by Imkaan Welfare Organization, and powered by the British Council Pakistan.
Her Game Needs No Sound
Reema's strength speaks beyond words. This photo essay captures the focus, discipline, and quiet determination of a young table tennis player who proves that passion does not need sound to be powerful.
First displayed at Beach Luxury Hotel — and now here for the world to see.
📷 Photos by Sameera
Bezubaan Kahaniyan — Voiceless Stories from Machar Colony is developed under the WOW Pakistan Gender Based Creative Grants 2025–2026, implemented by Imkaan Welfare Organization, and powered by the British Council Pakistan.
Maria's documentary is here!
Sewerage is not a comfortable topic. But for Machar Colony, it is an unavoidable one.
Maria went there anyway. And she made a documentary about it.
After months of climate change literacy training and 4 months of learning documentary filmmaking and research, Maria pulls back the surface on Machar Colony's sewerage crisis — mapping the problem, listening to the community, and exploring the solutions that have long been ignored.
We are so proud of her and so excited for you to see this. Watch, share, and celebrate with us!
The Youth Leaders Climate Initiative is powered by the High Commission of Canada through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.
#YouthLeadersClimateInitiative #YouthLed #ClimateAction #MacharColony #DocumentaryFilm Sewerage Karachi Pakistan CanadaFund YoungFilmmakers
🎬 Bilquis Fatima's documentary is here!
When it rains in Machar Colony, the water has nowhere to go. For the people who live here, that is not a weather problem — it is a crisis that plays out in their streets, their homes, and their health. 🌍
Bilquis Fatima takes us into the reality of drainage in Machar Colony — what breaks down, what gets left behind, and what solutions exist for communities that have long been overlooked.
We are so proud of her and so excited for you to see this. Watch, share, and celebrate with us! 🎉✨
The Youth Leaders Climate Initiative is powered by the High Commission of Canada through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.
#YouthLeadersClimateInitiative #YouthLed #ClimateAction #MacharColony #DocumentaryFilm #Drainage #Karachi #Pakistan #CanadaFund #YoungFilmmakers
https://youtu.be/8vHiIJfhrn0?si=H2w7DGsFfCS3j40h
Fatima's documentary is here!
What does inorganic waste look like when it never disappears? For Machar Colony, that is not a hypothetical — it is everyday life.
Fatima saw it. And she made a documentary about it.
After months of climate change literacy training and 4 months of learning documentary filmmaking and research, Fatima takes us into the world of inorganic waste — the plastic, the packaging, the debris that piles up and lingers — and asks who is really paying the price for what the rest of the world throws away.
We are so proud of her and so excited for you to see this. Watch, share, and celebrate with us!
The Youth Leaders Climate Initiative is powered by the High Commission of Canada through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.
#YouthLeadersClimateInitiative #YouthLed #ClimateAction #MacharColony #DocumentaryFilm InorganicWaste Karachi Pakistan CanadaFund YoungFilmmakers
Tayyaba's documentary is here!
What happens to the food we throw away? For Machar Colony, that question has an answer — and it is one most people never have to face.
Tayyaba did. And she made a documentary about it.
After months of climate change literacy training and 4 months of learning documentary filmmaking and research, Tayyaba brings us into the world of organic waste — what it is, where it goes, and why it matters deeply for communities that bear the heaviest burden of what others discard.
We are so proud of her and so excited for you to see this. Watch, share, and celebrate with us!
The Youth Leaders Climate Initiative is powered by the High Commission of Canada through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.
#YouthLeadersClimateInitiative #YouthLed #ClimateAction #MacharColony #DocumentaryFilm OrganicWaste Karachi Pakistan CanadaFund YoungFilmmakers
A landmark moment for undocumented communities and persons in Pakistan. We welcome the passage of the Pakistan Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2026, which retroactively affirms the equal right of Pakistani women to confer nationality on their children. For many families, this means long-denied identity documents and recognition for those who could not previously prove a father’s citizenship. At Imkaan, we have witnessed these challenges first-hand and have long advocated for this change.
Read the full joint statement by the Statelessness and Dignified Citizenship Coalition, the Global Alliance to End Statelessness, UNHCR, UN Women, and the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights at the link in our bio.
From morning outreach to evening case follow-ups — this is what legal empowerment looks like from the inside. Our community paralegals do not work from distant offices or formal institutions. They work from within the very communities they serve, navigating the complex realities of statelessness, documentation barriers, and legal exclusion alongside the people who live them every day.
In this video, we follow one of Imkaan's community paralegals through a single day — the conversations, the case work, the moments of progress, and the weight of the work that does not make it into any report. Trained through Imkaan's Community Based Paralegal Training and Legal Empowerment Programme, our paralegals are proof that when communities are equipped with knowledge, they become their own most powerful advocates.
✨Meet our speakers...
👥The lineup for our online session at Rightscon26, brings together expertises and lived experience from around the globe to curate an impactful and community rooted experience.
📅 Join us May 6,2026
🕡 11:30 am SAST | 10:30 am UK
✉️To register email :
[email protected]
⏳ Don't miss out - seats are filling up. 🌟 Be part of the Chang - let's shape up our future together.
@christy_chitengu
Palesa Maloisane
@htahera@nina_nomada@deneselov
Thank you for being part of this experience and for contributing your insights, leadership, and lived experience..
At Imkaan, community is not just where we work — it is who we are.
We are proud to be the implementing partner in Pakistan for the MH COST Project — the first and largest research study exploring mental health among stateless adolescents and young adults in Pakistan.
A key part of our implementation has been training and deploying community researchers — people from within the communities we serve — to collect data on the ground. Over several intensive days, the MH COST team led by Dr. Humera Iqbal, Dr. Francesa Brady, and Ms. Zarish Shireen, alongside Ms. Tahera Hasan, Founder & CEO of Imkaan Welfare Organization, equipped researchers with foundations in ethical research practice, informed consent, confidentiality, and culturally sensitive approaches to mental health conversations. Sessions covered key clinical constructs including trauma, psychological wellbeing, substance use, and psychosis, with role plays and real-life scenarios to practice navigating sensitive situations with empathy and care.
Ms. Umme Hamdani from Imkaan led the session on PSEA, safeguarding, and managing risk — ensuring every participant is kept safe, respected, and genuinely heard.
These community researchers are now on the ground, collecting data and bringing this research to life.
This is what community-rooted, ethical research implementation looks like — and we are proud to be at the heart of it.
The MH COST Project is funded by the Wellcome Trust and led by the Social Research Institute, University College London (UCL), UK — with Imkaan Welfare Organization as an implementing partner in Pakistan.
Salman's documentary is here!
We are so proud to share the very first youth-led documentary from our Youth Leaders Climate Initiative! 🎉
This moment has been months in the making. Salman — who calls Machar Colony home — began his journey with a deep training in climate change literacy, before spending 4 months learning documentary filmmaking, building research skills, and diving into the issues shaping his own community. The result? A powerful short documentary on Machar Colony, solid waste, and the climate realities facing one of Karachi's most vulnerable communities — told by someone who lives them.
This is what it means to invest in young people. Watch, share, and celebrate with us! 🌍✨
The Youth Leaders Climate Initiative is powered by the High Commission of Canada through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.
#YouthLeadersClimateInitiative #YouthLed #ClimateAction #MacharColony #DocumentaryFilm #SolidWaste #Karachi #Pakistan #CanadaFund #YoungFilmmakers
https://youtu.be/kCcUyBGUME0?si=WsRM-ndKxuY3_OE2
At Imkaan, safeguarding is not a box to tick — it is a culture we build together.
This week, we conducted a Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) training with our outreach team, paralegals, and lawyers providing legal aid support to communities in Machar Colony and Orangi Town. The training explored sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment through the lens of our day-to-day community work — grounded in the real relationships and real situations our team navigates on the ground.
We also ran a pretest at the start of the session to understand existing knowledge across the team and tailor our approach accordingly — because good training meets people where they are.
Protecting the communities we serve starts with holding ourselves accountable.
#PSEA #Safeguarding #Imkaan #LegalAid #HumanitarianWork #MacharColony #OrangiTown #CommunityProtection #Pakistan
