29 Facts About Fouzia Saeed

Fouzia Saeed completed her term on 9 February 2018 with exuberant accolades from the press and civil society for her stellar success in revitalizing Lok Virsa and expanding the space for performance culture in Pakistan.

In July 2021, while on a road expedition for PNCA to central Balochistan to identify young artistic talent, Fouzia Saeed suffered serious injuries in a road accident.

Fouzia Saeed received most of her schooling and early college education in Peshawar, Pakistan, where she graduated from the University of Peshawar with a BS in Home Economics as the University Gold Medallist for Academic Excellence in 1979.

Fouzia Saeed received additional funding from the Ethel L Parker International Fellowship Award of the American Home Economics Association for her doctoral research.

Fouzia Saeed returned to her native Pakistan immediately after completing her degrees, but has returned to Minneapolis on several occasions as a visiting lecturer and to receive a Distinguished International Alumni Award in 1998 and the International Leadership Award in 2008, both presented by the University of Minnesota in recognition of her contributions to the field of education and the women's movement in Pakistan.

Fouzia Saeed attended the Fellowship program in Tokyo from September to November 2010 and gave lectures at numerous Japanese universities and wrote about her experiences on her return.

Fouzia Saeed served as the director of Mehergarh: A Center for Learning where she headed its programs on youth, gender and human rights from 2004 until 2012.

Fouzia Saeed is one of the very few Pakistani women of her generation who has learned how to SCUBA dive and has dived in Pakistan, the Bahamas, the Mergui Archipelago of Burma, Fiji, and various islands of the Philippines.

In 2000, Fouzia Saeed was instrumental in forming a network called AASHA [2] in Pakistan.

Fouzia Saeed gave each character a humorous name to break the aura that prevents women from complaining.

Fouzia Saeed has worked extensively on issues of Violence against women and its effects on women and their children over the past 25 years.

Fouzia Saeed received training as an advocate and a councillor to deal with violence survivors at Chrysalis [3].

Fouzia Saeed worked on the helpline, counselling violence survivors on the phone and provided them with references for legal help, medical and shelter facilities.

Fouzia Saeed received training from Minnesota Intervention Center for facilitating small groups of women.

Fouzia Saeed worked with St Paul Intervention Center as a woman's advocate and volunteered in a program which provided violence survivors direct support after they had requested police intervention.

Fouzia Saeed formed a taskforce under its Islamabad chapter called Committee for Violence Against Women.

Fouzia Saeed was a founding member and executive director of, Bedari, a community organisation focused on women's issues, specifically related to violence.

Fouzia Saeed has been working throughout her career on women's issues in the field of folklore, development and social change.

Fouzia Saeed's career started as a Deputy Director Research at the Pakistan National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage where she developed and supervised a folklore research program and contributed to improvement of the folklore archives and the library of the institute.

Fouzia Saeed conducted research on various aspects of folklore, through the Institute and on her own.

Fouzia Saeed has done research on other entertainment forms like folk circus, folk dances and folk natak, and has mostly focused on women's experiences in each of them.

Fouzia Saeed used this culture as a mirror for Pakistanis to assess their own gender relations.

Fouzia Saeed contributed a shorter, more technical version of her book in an international collection of articles comparing legal systems for prostitution in Europe and Asia.

Fouzia Saeed has been actively involved in reviving Pakistani folk performance arts through organisations she has been associated with, and is a folk dancer herself.

Fouzia Saeed has been associated with electronic media since 1977 when she was among the first female television news announcers on Pakistan Television Corporation from Peshawar.

Fouzia Saeed hosted four different television series of talk shows on social and cultural issues: Hum Qadam, Bholi hui hun dastan, New Horizons and Rishtay.

Fouzia Saeed continues to appear on PTV and other channels as a commentator on political and social issues.

Fouzia Saeed organised a large gathering of citizens at the National Library on 23 June 2009 to map out a strategy for countering talibanisation in Pakistan.

Fouzia Saeed continues to broaden her counter narrative through her work at Lok Virsa.