Aemon Iqbal belongs to a humble family from Faisalabad and the pursuit of education brought to Lahore. After graduating with a degree in Education, she enrolled to study Special Education with a specialization in Visual Impairment from University of Education
in Lahore. With an MS gained in the subject, she is presently doing an MS in Speech Language Pathology from Riphah International University. The course of education seemed impractical for many of her friends and family members, but Aemon has always
been up for a challenge.
“My undergraduate professor advised me to study Special Education,” Aemon says, recalling how her journey began. “There is definitely a need for specialists in the field.”
Aemon’s decision was inspired by a visually impaired class fellow who was legally blind but was ably navigating through his studies and coursework along with his entire batch.
“My class fellow became an inspiration because he was using his smartphone, apps and Braille with ease. He was a great student, but he worried about opportunities in practical life. When it was time to choose our specializations, I opted for Visual
Impairment to help people like him.”
Only 8 students out of 48 opted for specializing in Visual Impairment in Aemon’s MS batch. The rest all selected Hearing Impairment because they believed Sign Language was easier than Braille. For Aemon, this was a sign yet again about how much
work needs to be done to support visually impaired people. After graduation, she applied for the Amal Career-Prep Fellowship, funded by PepsiCo Foundation, to further polish her professional skills.
Empowering the Drive for Social Good
The Amal Career-Prep Fellowship is a 3-month long leadership program focused on developing the mindsets (purpose, self-efficacy, resilience, etc.) and job skills (confidence, interviewing, CV writing etc.) of underserved students entering the job market.
The PepsiCo Foundation has been supporting Amal Academy since October 2018. The partnership, now in its 5th year, has created mentorship opportunities for over 7,514 total graduates, out of which 42% graduates are women.
Aemon was a part of Amal’s Batch 223 in November 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. For Aemon and her batchmates the Fellowship was conducted completely online. Despite the lack of in-person classes, Aemon was committed to making a difference.
“Several ideas were shared by my group fellows for our Mega Project but I felt strongly about leveraging my MS degree work and do something for the visually impaired people I had come to know during my university days,” she adds, recounting
how her Amal Mega Project materialized. “My group was reluctant but went along with it and ended up being completely sympathetic to the cause of supporting visually impaired people.”
One of Aemon’s instructors at Amal Academy, Ahsan Ali, is particularly proud of the project. “Aemon's mega project, Speculars - See the Unseen, aimed to empower the Visually Impaired Community (VIC) by training them in digital skills such
as voice-over, audio editing, content writing, translation, and transcription,” he says.
Through this project, Aemon and her team enabled VIC members to gain digital skills and become financially independent by offering their services on freelance platforms. Aemon was also successfully working part-time work as a digital freelancer and she
leveraged her learnings to design a financial model for her project.
“We were offering a comprehensive package of audio recording and editing skills and teaching how to become successful freelancers based on my experience. We advertised on social media and 5 people with sight signed up. They paid a fee of Rs. 5000
each,” she shares, detailing how the project was made financially possible since audio editing software for the visually impaired are expensive. “We trained 6 members of the VIC members for free with the money we earned training people
with sight. There were 18 classes and 3 informal sessions for feedback and progress.”
Aemon’s financial planning meant paying sighted students of her Amal Mega Project supported visually impaired students in getting the training.
The program was a success, with linkages made with local NGOs like Deaf Welfare Awareness Foundation (DWAF). The Specualrs’ team was given a chance to award certificates of completion and audio recording aids to support their program graduates in
a joint ceremony with DWAF.
Visually impaired student Tanzeela Aziz receiveding her certificate of course completion from Speculars at the program’s graduation ceremony at Alhamra, Lahore.
“The PepsiCo and Amal Career-Prep Fellowship gave me a chance to connect with likeminded people to expand my work,” Aemon declares. “I was able to achieve much more than I had imagined and now I hope to support many more as Specualrs
becomes a registered organization.”
A Hope in the Dark
According to the results of ‘Third National Survey of Blindness’ conducted between 2019-2021 by the Ministry of Health, more than 9 million people in the country have
vision impairment. Out of them, 484,027 are legally blind.
Aemon’s struggle is to help VIC become empowered and financially independent, along with one of her Amal team members Muhammad Usman Ghani. The project is now her purpose.
“Our society thinks visually impaired people cannot do anything but there is so much technology now that empowers them. Many VIC members in Pakistan have created apps and devices to help people like them. We must all support them,” she reiterates.
As her second MS degree wraps up and Speculars becomes an organization, Aemon is applying her learnings from the PepsiCo Foundation supported Amal Fellowship to create meaningful change for the people who often go unseen in the society.