Compelling 2018 grad: Tower Hill's Zara Ali helps Indian artisans support families
As more than 8,000 high school seniors move into high season for graduations, we'd like to introduce you to three notable young women who will soon zip into caps and gowns.
Tower Hill senior Zara Ali and her sister turned some of their savings into a program that would help Mumbai, India, artisans support themselves and their families.
Look on www.delawareonilne.com for stories about MOT Charter's Juanita Ortiz and St. Mark's senior Hanna Daneker.
Ortiz is determined to be successful after surviving the 2013 attack in a Nairobi, Kenya, mall, where her father died.
Daneker finds focus and meaning in her love for the equestrian competition of eventing after surviving surgery for a brain tumor the size of a tennis ball.
Zara Ali
Ali and her sister Marvi were just 12 and 9 when they decided to pool some of their savings from their allowances to help entrepreneurial women who live half a world away.
Their $250 in seed money led to the creation of a nonprofit that this year expects sales of $25,000.
“I have the opportunity and the means,” said Zara, who also visits the artisans in India several times a year and handles all the shipments from the basement of the family home in Hockessin.
It began when the sisters were visiting their grandparents in Mumbai, and Zara was tutoring children in math and English. A 12-year-old student quit the Akanksha Foundation program to help her family.
To help Millie and other needy families, the sisters decided to create a sales platform better than the roadside and daily markets the artisans relied on. They first bought items to give as gifts and sell via Instagram. That morphed into a website, www.zumantra.org, with the motto “buy and do good.”
The sisters also sell at house parties and events (look for merchandise at the Brandywine Festival of the Arts this fall), and they’re pitching local schools to stock items with school logos, too.
ZuMantra features products from 35 Mumbai cooperatives, with profits turned into a microfinancing fund for artisans to buy equipment. They hope to expand to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Karachi, Pakistan.
ZuMantra sells tote-bags, scarves and jewelry, with leather-bound notebooks which Zara says are “popular for agendas or diaries,” the most popular items.
Leather from India is surprising, considering the status of cows there. But the sisters support Hindu and Muslim merchants. Their father, Sayed, is a Muslim Pakistani, and their mother, Hanishi, is a Hindu Indian, so they’re used to religious diversity.
Zara brought some of that multiculturalism to Tower Hill by creating a French club (she’s also studying Latin and Hindi) and a current events club (“there needs to be a bipartisan platform where students can learn and discuss important topics,” she said).
Marvi said Zara’s intellectual curiosity inspires her.
“It is not uncommon to see her spend hours, outside of her homework, debating with our father and researching a topic or concept she had learned earlier that day in class, simply because she was curious. It is this intellectual curiosity of hers that sparked my love for current events and international relations,” she said. Marvi has started a current events club at her school, St. Andrew’s in Middletown.
Zara also brought her interests in helping others to the American Civil Liberties Union. She was just 15 when she joined law-school interns in doing research and community outreach for that organization.
She's also worked with the Delaware Department of Justice, where she has summarized investigative reports for arson and homicide cases, listened in on recorded prison calls to search for evidence and accompanied prosecutors to court. Her entree was from Kelly Sheridan Hicks, a deputy attorney general and a mentor from Model U.N.
Compelling 2018 grad:
St. Mark's Hannah Danekar competes to cope with cancer
MOT Charter's Juanita Ortiz survived Kenyan Mall attack
In India, she volunteers to “to help the disabled assimilate, to practice English with them and to teach interview skills as they search for jobs.”
She’ll bring her activism to college as well: She earned a full Jefferson Scholarship to the University of Virginia, where she’ll focus on political philosophy, policy and law or public policy.
Zara has also taught Marvi about hard work and perseverance.
“Everything she has achieved, every title, every leadership position and every award has come only from pure hard work,” Marvi said. “There was no short way or any alternative route to get where she is. She has taught me there is no substitute in life for diligence, dedication and a good work ethic.”
Even with “such a humongous workload,” Zara still finds time for photography.
“She has a very creative side and genuinely enjoys capturing powerful human emotions that cannot be displayed in any other way than a photograph,” Marvi said. “I think it’s the implementation of her skills as a photographer that has also formed her ability to be so perceptive with people!”
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