Sister Zeph
Women’s activist, education leader, published writer, international speaker & community figure committed to fostering interfaith harmony
Sister Zeph is the Founder and Chairperson of Zephaniah Women Education and Empowerment Foundation (ZWEE), which works to raise the status of women through education in Pakistan, and Zeph Sunday Schools Ministry. When she was just 13 years old, Sister Zeph started recruiting girls to attend free classes at her open-air school in rural Pakistan. Through mentors and resources she found via the women-led social network World Pulse, Sister Zeph secured a significant grant to build her own school. Decades later, she continues to uplift women and children by giving them free education, skills training, and awareness of their rights and urges peace through dialogue.
For her lifelong work and dedication to uplifting disadvantaged communities, she was awarded the Bioneers changemakers award, and The Eternal Life Ministry of Pakistan’s “Outstanding Performance” award. She was also the subject of the New York Festivals 2016 gold-winning documentary, “Bring Back Our Girls - Flight of the Falcons,” which documented her efforts of providing education to the girls in her town of Gujranwala and her struggle against the status quo.
She has experience of peacebuilding among Christians and Muslims for over 20 years and has saved hundreds of young women from child marriage, honour killing and illiteracy and has empowered even more.
In 2021, she was awarded a Gold medal as a Book of Humanity from kar-E-Khair Pakistan and an Excellent performance award from Victory Church of Pakistan. That same year, she served as an ambassador for the World Literacy Foundation of Australia. From 2019-2021, she was an ambassador for World Pulse.
Sister Zeph is an alumnus of the Asian center for women’s studies EWHA women’s university of South Korea, the network for religious and traditional peacemakers. Recently, she became the first among Pakistani minorities to become a kaiciid graduate through The King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue.
She has two Masters degrees (history and political science) from the University of Punjab Pakistan.
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