"Growing up in a traditional business-oriented joint family in a drought-prone district of Telangana, I have been perceiving what it takes for a multicultural society to exist in the present-day world.
I graduated from St.Mary`s College with BBA. Since the day I moved to Hyderabad for my higher education, I have always been seeking a platform to nurture my idea of multicultural coexistence, and that's where I found Rubaroo NGO based out of the city who is relentlessly working on education and human rights advocacy. A 3-day workshop on interfaith included playful activities on values, perceptions, conflict management, and the social action project we conducted in a women`s degree college in Mahabubnagar has brought me a proper understanding of how to resolve conflicts among smaller groups and avoidance of communal violence.
Over time, Rubaroo NGO nominated a few youth champions of the previous workshop for a US exchange program called SUSI, Study of the U.S. Institutes (SUSIs) for Scholars.
Among them, I was selected for the cohort Religious Freedom and Pluralism. Unfortunately, the pandemic began the year in which we were supposed to fly to the United States for the 6 weeks of the study tour. So we had to go through the sessions virtually for two months and the community action project in further time and then eventually things were getting better. Finally, in Oct 2022, we flew to the United States for a 10-day capstone program on religious freedom and pluralism which included round table meetings on democracy, lectures by Temple university professors on Religious freedom, walking around historical monuments and worship places in Philadelphia city, an interfaith community center in Baltimore and the Washington DC.
My whole journey at SUSI consisted of challenges and surprises but I must say it's truly a remarkable and worthwhile experience on the whole as meeting new people beyond the border with similar thought processes has truly nurtured my idea of multi-cultural coexistence."
- Arshad Khan, SUSI Alumni 2021/2022
