KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

An econ­o­mist by pro­fes­sion, Shar­i­fa Ali-Ab­dul­lah grad­u­at­ed from the pres­ti­gious Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty in New York—an Ivy League in­sti­tu­tion—with a Mas­ter’s De­gree in Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Man­age­ment.

In 1995, she ap­plied for the post of Di­rec­tor/CEO of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Five years lat­er, her pi­o­neer­ing work laid the foun­da­tion for what would be­come a na­tion­al man­date to care for, pro­tect, and re­ha­bil­i­tate chil­dren at risk or those who had suf­fered abuse or ne­glect.

While she de­scribes it as one of the most re­ward­ing ex­pe­ri­ences of her life, the jour­ney came at a per­son­al cost. The emo­tion­al toll of the work deeply af­fect­ed her men­tal well-be­ing.

“It’s re­al­ly an ac­com­plish­ment so close to my heart,” she said.

“I got it start­ed. Af­ter five years, my doc­tor was say­ing, ‘You have to stay there and look at the is­sues of child pro­tec­tion, I would look af­ter your health, don’t wor­ry.’ But I was burnt out, and I left.”

Ali-Ab­dul­lah then ap­plied for the po­si­tion of As­sis­tant Res­i­dent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the UNDP, a post she se­cured. For her the achieve­ment was a full-cir­cle mo­ment.

“That is the Deputy Head of Of­fice in Trinidad and To­ba­go that cov­ers Aru­ba, Cu­ra­cao and St Mar­teen, I’ve been there since. We deal with pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion, cli­mate ac­tion and good gov­er­nance.”

With over 20 years of di­verse de­vel­op­ment ex­pe­ri­ence, Ali-Ab­dul­lah has worked close­ly with heads of gov­ern­ment, and fi­nance and plan­ning min­is­ters and served in sev­er­al se­nior po­si­tions in­clud­ing CEO, se­nior co­or­di­na­tor and se­nior econ­o­mist with­in key pub­lic sec­tor agen­cies in T&T, in­clud­ing the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­istry of Fi­nance. She has al­so worked in sev­er­al coun­tries in the Caribbean, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, An­tigua and Ja­maica.

The part-time lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies was al­so part of the top team that planned and ex­e­cut­ed sev­er­al ma­jor con­fer­ences in the Caribbean in­clud­ing the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing 2009, the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and the 4th Glob­al Con­fer­ence for Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States.

While pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment has played a huge role in her ca­reer, Ali-Ab­dul­lah’s heart has al­ways been with chil­dren. She spent the first eight years of her work­ing ca­reer as a teacher and con­tin­ues to work with chil­dren through the M2 Hope Foun­da­tion, a char­i­ty set up in ho­n­our of her par­ents to as­sist and in­spire un­der­priv­i­leged chil­dren to re­alise their po­ten­tial.

“My moth­er was a vi­sion­ary when it came to ed­u­ca­tion,” she said.

“She her­self was not able to move be­yond the pri­ma­ry school lev­el but she en­sured that all her four daugh­ters were ed­u­cat­ed. As Mus­lim women ed­u­ca­tion is fun­da­men­tal and com­pul­so­ry. A lot of peo­ple think you don’t have to ed­u­cate Mus­lim women. Ed­u­ca­tion is very dear to us, it was my moth­er’s vi­sion and my fam­i­ly has very strong women.

“Through the foun­da­tion, we have pro­vid­ed lap­tops and school books for chil­dren. We do not ad­ver­tise, we work with the Imams and so­cial work­ers in the com­mu­ni­ties.”

The econ­o­mist has al­so worked on the pol­i­cy lev­el with sev­er­al Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tions as well. She has de­vel­oped and im­ple­ment­ed nu­mer­ous pro­grammes, projects and sem­i­nars for women and chil­dren.

The M2 Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent now spends most of her spare time on her lat­est project.

“I’ve been do­ing a lot of re­search on the is­sues af­fect­ing Mus­lim women in par­tic­u­lar and I’ve start­ed writ­ing a book,” she said.

“I think it is im­por­tant to doc­u­ment our his­to­ry as Mus­lim women be­cause we don’t have the kind of cul­tur­al bag­gage that oth­er Mus­lim women may have across the world, we are so lib­er­at­ed we have so many op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­cel to self-ac­tu­alise.

“I al­ways want­ed to work in the for­eign ser­vice, that’s why I stud­ied eco­nom­ics and lan­guages, Span­ish and French, I didn’t get the job, they said no va­can­cies when I ap­plied. I ac­tu­al­ly went full cir­cle and now I’m in­to in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment with the UN.

“Through my jobs, I’ve been able to trav­el ex­ten­sive­ly and see the is­sues which af­fect women and it re­al­ly re­flects how for­tu­nate we are. I think it is im­por­tant to ex­am­ine the fac­tors and vari­ables and how do we help our Mus­lim sis­ters.”

Ali-Ab­dul­lah said it was im­por­tant to recog­nise the re­al is­sues and ad­vo­cate for the rights of Mus­lim women in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.