"I Am Blessed With 1,600 Daughters Now"

Zareen shares with us her story of how she harnessed enormous tragedy and grief to help others across the globe

- DIANE PRIESTLEY

Zareen's face lights up with pure joy when she talks about her beautiful daughter. Halimah was 19 and had just started university studying Third World Development in November 2007.

A kind-hearted and vibrant young woman, who baked cakes to fundraise for charities, Halimah was bubbling with ambitious dreams, inspired by her humanitarian mother whom she idolised.

However, tragedy struck when she was murdered by a man who had been traumatised since losing family members in the war in Iraq. After committing this terrible crime, he went on to kill himself.

Halimah's shocking murder rocked the close-knit family as well as the entire community. Her adoring parents, brother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends were completely devastated.

How does a mother recover from such a heartbreaking loss?

Zareen chose goodness over bitterness. She explains, "The love that I felt for my daughter now had nowhere to go, but had I kept it bottled up inside of me, I feel that it would have corroded my insides. I needed to do something with it. I needed to not just feel love, I needed to do love."

At just 13, Halimah had planned to start a charity after she graduated, and so, Zareen poured all her energy alchemising her grief into love by launching the Halimah Trust to build a school for girls in Pakistan.

Zareen fundraised to build primary and secondary schools for 434 girls, orphaned by earthquakes and living in poverty. By 2019 the buildings were expanded to include a college with a total of 1,600 students.