Hinna Maluch, MSc, Previous Coordinator, Empowerment+ Manchester
Hinna Maluch was previously a Religious Freedom & Business Foundation Research Fellow coordinating the Empowerment+ initiative in Manchester, UK.
Hinna holds an MSc degree in Development Economics from The Sussex University, UK.
Previously, Hinna has worked as an Environmental Economist at the National Physical Laboratory, UK. She has written a business case for the UK Government for a unique Earth Observation satellite project that aims to address Climate Change.
Hinna is also engaged with Aid to the Church in Need, a Pontifical Foundation of the Catholic Church that works for Persecuted Christians worldwide. Having faced persecution in Pakistan as a Christian minority, she now wishes to make a difference to the lives of other religious minorities, by promoting religious tolerance and social cohesion.
Hinna’s Story
Women and minorities face numerous challenges in Pakistan. Nobel Peace laureate Malala, a young Muslim woman, was attacked with acid as she advocated for the right of girls to go to school. Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman with young children, has been on death row since 2010 because others accused her of blasphemy.
Against this background, Hinna (Parvez) Maluch, a young Pakistani Catholic woman, is fearful heading back to her native country. Hinna can only dream of the day when the interfaith Empowerment-Plus Community social cohesion and enterprise initiative she is helping set up with the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation in Manchester, UK, could be done without fear in her native country.
In Manchester, she works with Muslims, Christians and Jews to catalyze social and commercial enterprises. These enterprises will enlarge the public space for faith to make positive contributions to society and powerfully demonstrate how social entrepreneurship and business can contribute to interfaith understanding, religious freedom and peace. Specifically, Empowerment-Plus is a social cohesion and enterprise initiative in which Millennials from diverse faith backgrounds work together in community to apply universally held spiritual principles and values to their relationships, careers and businesses.
Empowerment-Plus is also addressing another immediate global challenge – the socio-economic empowerment of refugees, immigrants and marginalized religious minorities.
Increasing interfaith understanding and religious freedom in Pakistan could help more young innovators like Hinna be a welcomed, contributing member of Pakistani society and its economy. Indeed, we hope Empowerment+ can soon come to Pakistan.