Iraj Butt and Taha Rashid
Bridging Relationships, Building Peace: Counseling for Marital Harmony
Iraj Butt, MPP’26 and Taha Rashid, MPP’26 are both studying at the Harris School of Public Policy. They will use their grant for the project Bridging Relationships, Building Peace: Counseling for Marital Harmony. This project will be completed in Mughalpura, Lahore, Pakistan.
June 2, 2025
Rebuilding Dreams, Remotely: How Uraan Took Flight After the Davis Peace Project Award
By Iraj Butt & Taha Rashid
In February, we joined a Zoom call with Denise, Michael, and Deb from International House, expecting the usual fellowship updates. Instead, they told us we had secured a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant. The award turned months of planning on women’s economic participation in Pakistan into a concrete project, and we were both grateful and eager to get started.
Our original plan focused on in-person counselling workshops in Lahore. Despite growing numbers of Pakistani women completing university, many leave the workforce soon after marriage because of social expectations, workplace inflexibility, and family pressure. We wanted to bring legal experts and career coaches together to help women understand their rights, strengthen negotiation skills, and map out paths back into paid work.
By March we were lining up travel and confirming local partners—then the security situation changed. A sharp escalation on the India–Pakistan border led to strikes in mainland cities, including our own neighborhoods in Lahore. As airlines cancelled routes and new U.S. travel-ban rumors surfaced, it became clear that a remote project was the way to go.
We pivoted.
Within a matter of days we re-scoped the project as Uraan—Urdu for “flight”—a fully remote business-incubation lab. The counselling component continued, delivered through weekly interactive sessions that combine rights awareness with introductory entrepreneurship training. From those sessions we will select twenty-five women for an intensive cohort, each with a chance to compete for seed funding for their project.
The logistics are heavier, the security risks lower, and the core goal unchanged: equip women with the knowledge, networks, and initial capital to run their own enterprises.
We appreciate the flexibility and support from International House and the Davis Projects for Peace team. We will share more once Uraan’s first cohort is underway and look forward to seeing what these entrepreneurs build next.