 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(September 2023) |
Sophia Swire | |
|---|---|
 Swire speaking at a conference in 2019 | |
| Born | London, England |
| Alma mater | Manchester University |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Relatives | Hugo Swire |
| Website | http://www.sophiaswire.com |
Sophia Swire is a British social entrepreneur and impact venture capitalist with a focus on gender, climate and sustainability.
Sophia Swire is the daughter of Humphrey Roger Swire, a director of Sotheby’s, [1] and descendant of Sir John Swire. Through her mother, Philippa, The Dowager Marchioness Townshend, daughter of Colonel George Jardine Kidston Montgomerie of Southannan [2] who married secondly George Townshend, 7th Marquess Townshend, [3] she is descended from William the Conqueror, Mary, Queen of Scots and Oliver Cromwell.[ citation needed ] She has three brothers: Mark, Philip and Hugo Swire, Baron Swire, [2] a member of the House of Lords and former Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Swire was raised in Britain and educated at Queen's Gate School in London, and at the University of Manchester, where she graduated in 1986 with a bachelor's degree with honours in the History of Art with Italian. [1] [4]
In the late 1980s, Swire worked in the City of London in equity analysis and for Kleinwort Benson in institutional equity sales. [4] She left banking after Black Monday (1987) to found a non-profit, Learning for Life . [5] [6]
In 1990, she became noted for selling pashmina shawls through her sustainable fashion brand, [7] [8] after seeing them worn by Bollywood stars at a fund-raising benefit of Imran Khan’s in Lahore, then finding a source for the shawls at a Himalayan workshop in Nepal. [1]
In 1993, Swire co-founded Learning for Life, an educational charity, acting as a trustee and chairing its board from 1995 to 2000. [9] This established over 200 schools for girls in rural Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, an achievement for which she was awarded the 2010 Award for Empowering Women in Pakistan. [10]
In 2008, at the invitation of Rory Stewart and the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, she returned to Afghanistan to establish a school for jewellers and gem-cutters at Turquoise Mountain. [11] The first students graduated in 2010. [12]
In 2010, Swire became the senior gemstones advisor to the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, with funding from the World Bank. [13]
In 2012, Swire established Future Brilliance, non-profit offering workplace skills and enterprise development training with a focus on Afghan women. She worked to revive the jewellery industry in gemstone-rich areas of Afghanistan. [14] [1] The first Future Brilliance Afghanistan project trained 36 Afghan gem-cutting and jewellery artisans in Jaipur, India, and assisted them in forming Afghanistan’s first jewellery co-operative and brand, Aayenda Jewelry. [15] Future Brilliance successfully delivered the first Digital Literacy training project in Afghanistan, in 2013, funded by the Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI).
In October 2013, Swire was announced as a Conservative candidate in the European Parliament election of 2014 in South West England and Gibraltar, together with Ashley Fox, Julie Girling, James Cracknell, Georgina Butler, and Melissa Maynard. [16] The names were confirmed when nominations were lodged in April 2014. [17] [18] Swire said during the campaign that her financial background would enable her to get value for money from the European Union for causes in the region and for protecting the United Kingdom as Europe's principal financial centre. She also wished to develop policy to address the growing refugee crisis and tackle the rise of radical extremism. [16]
In August 2021, following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, Swire recruited 170 volunteers from her GEDI.VC network to launch a Task Force for Future Brilliance. Together with her team, she provided support to over 1500 Afghans, evacuating several hundred women and their families to safety. Among the women she evacuated, was Sharbat Gula, the famous National Geographic "green-eyed Afghan girl", whom she rescued at the request of Steve and Bonnie McCurry, and evacuated with the support of the distinguished Italian diplomat and head of the Italian Secret Service, Elisabetta Belloni. They were evacuated to a Future Brilliance safehouse for asylum seekers in Pakistan, where Afghan women were taught ICT and computer skills, digital literacy and English language and Afghan child refugees were taught maths, science and robotics. [19]
Swire created and produced the documentary film, Burning Man: Art on Fire. [20] She co-produced the BBC Inside Story film, Smoke Rings.[ citation needed ] She also produced the Channel Four documentary Mr Jinnah: the Making of Pakistan. [21] On behalf of Global Witness, she contributed to the first Natural Resource Charter. [22]
In 2015, she spoke at the United Nations in New York on Women’s Entrepreneurship Day. [23]
Afghan Girl is a 1984 photographic portrait of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan during the Soviet–Afghan War. The photograph, taken by American photojournalist Steve McCurry near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. While the portrait's subject initially remained unknown, she was identified by early 2002: Gula, an ethnic Pashtun from Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province, was a 12-year-old child residing in Pakistan's Nasir Bagh.
Cashmere wool, usually simply known as cashmere, is a fiber obtained from cashmere goats, pashmina goats, and some other breeds of goat. It has been used to make yarn, textiles and clothing for hundreds of years. Cashmere is closely associated with the Kashmir shawl, the word "cashmere" deriving from an anglicization of Kashmir, when the Kashmir shawl reached Europe in the 19th century. Both the soft undercoat and the guard hairs may be used; the softer hair is reserved for textiles, while the coarse guard hair is used for brushes and other non-apparel purposes.
Pashmina refers to, depending on the source, the cashmere wool of the Changthangi cashmere goat, for fine Kashmiri cashmere wool or a synonym for cashmere wool.
A shawl is a simple item of clothing, loosely worn over the shoulders, upper body and arms, and sometimes also over the head. It is usually a rectangular piece of cloth, but can also be square or triangular in shape. Other shapes include oblong shawls. It is associated with the inhabitants of the northern Indian subcontinent—particularly Kashmir and Punjab—and Central Asia, but can be found in many other parts of the world.
Begum Ra'ana Liaqat Ali Khan was the First Lady of Pakistan from 1947 to 1951 as the wife of Liaquat Ali Khan who served as the 1st Prime Minister of Pakistan. She was also the first female governor in Pakistan, serving Sindh. She was one of the leading woman figures in the Pakistan Movement, and a career economist, and prominent stateswoman from the start of the cold war till the fall and the end of the cold war.
Sherry Rehman is a Pakistani politician, journalist and former diplomat who has been the member of the Senate of Pakistan since 2015. She was the first female Leader of the Opposition in the Senate from March to August 2018 and served as Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States from 2011 to 2013. She is currently serving as the Federal Minister for the Ministry of Climate Change.
Fatima Jinnah was a Pakistani politician and stateswoman. She was the younger sister of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder and the first governor-general of Pakistan. She was the Leader of the Opposition of Pakistan from 1960 until her death in 1967.
Ruth Katherina Martha Pfau, FCM was a German–Pakistani Catholic Christian religious sister and physician who was a member of the "Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary". She emigrated from Germany in 1961 and devoted more than 55 years of her life to fighting leprosy in Pakistan. Pfau was honoured with the Hilal-i-Pakistan-, Hilal-i-Imtiaz-, Nishan-i-Quaid-i-Azam-, and the Sitara-i-Quaid-i-Azam awards.
Pakistan's first presidential elections were held on 2 January 1965. The voting was to be indirect, as the President had to be elected by the 80,000 "basic democrats", who made up the Electoral College. These basic Democrats were basically democratically elected public representatives who served in the Divisional, District, Tehsil or Union councils.
Joanne King Herring is an American socialite, businesswoman, political activist, philanthropist, diplomat, and former television talk show host.
Queen's Gate School is a private day school for girls aged 4–18 in Queen's Gate, South Kensington, London, England.
The Kashmir shawl, the predecessor of the contemporary cashmere shawl, is a type of shawl identified by its distinctive Kashmiri weave and for being made of fine shahtoosh or pashmina wool. Contemporary variants include the pashmina and shahtoosh shawls. In the late 20th century, they evolved to middle-class popularity through generic cashmere products, and raffal, shawls woven in the Kashmiri style, but using thicker Merino wool. Originally designed as a covering for men in India, it has evolved in the popular cultures of India, Europe, and the United States as indicators of nobility and rank, heirlooms giving on a girl's coming-of-age and marriage, and subsequently, as artistic elements in interior design.
Fatima Begum is a revered woman of the Pakistan Movement.
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the age of 17. She is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, the second Pakistani and the first Pashtun to receive a Nobel Prize. Yousafzai is a human rights advocate for the education of women and children in her native homeland, Swat, where the Pakistani Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become Pakistan's "most prominent citizen."
The story of history of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan began on 14 August 1947 when the country came into being in the form of Dominion of Pakistan within the British Commonwealth as the result of Pakistan Movement and the partition of India. While the history of the Pakistani Nation according to the Pakistan government's official chronology started with the Islamic rule over Indian subcontinent by Muhammad bin Qasim which reached its zenith during Mughal Era. In 1947, Pakistan consisted of West Pakistan, East Pakistan and Hyderabad The President of All-India Muslim League and later the Pakistan Muslim League, Muhammad Ali Jinnah became Governor-General while the secretary general of the Muslim League, Liaquat Ali Khan became Prime Minister. The constitution of 1956 made Pakistan an Islamic democratic country.
Moon on a Rainbow Shawl is a 1957 play written by Trinidadian actor-playwright Errol John. Described as "ground-breaking" and "a breakthrough in Britain for black writing," the play has been produced and revived worldwide since its premiere at London's Royal Court Theatre. It won the 1957 London Observer playwriting competition.
Bibi Amtus Salam was a social worker and disciple of Mohandas Gandhi who played an active role in combating communal violence in the wake of the Partition of India and in the rehabilitation of refugees who came to India following partition.
Jinnah Hospital is a 200-bed hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan. Built by the government of Pakistan, it is one of the largest hospitals in Afghanistan under the control of the Afghan Ministry of Public Health.
Pippa Small MBE is a British jeweller, anthropologist and humanitarian. She is the owner of Pippa Small Jewellery.