Mission & Vision
Our Mission
Our mission is to inspire the next generation of leaders to lead both themselves and their communities with integrity, empathy, and a nuanced understanding of global leadership issues. We are deeply connected with the communities we work with, and guided by those we seek to serve.
Our Vision
Our vision is of a world where each individual has the personal leadership needed to bring transformation to their communities and, specifically, where every migrant, refugee or displaced person is given the opportunity to flourish in their new community and that they develop the skills to contribute back to both their host community and community of origin.
Immigration is fast becoming a dirty word across much of the developed world yet it is also a feature of a prosperous world that has gained much from the cheap and easily available goods and services that have vastly contributed to the growth of middle class wealth across the world. The iPhone you hold in your hand, the clothes you wear on your back, the strawberries you enjoy in winter, are all made possible by people migrating far from their home shores in search of better economic conditions for themselves and their families.
But there are also increasing challenges posed not just by the search for economic opportunity, but by the growing threats of climate change and global conflict that is contributing to the mass migration of many people who are fleeing death and devastation that is not of their own making. Women and children are particularly affected by this and are often deprived of leadership opportunities to help shape alternative realities for their lives. We believe that women especially need to be given opportunities for leadership and that they can be powerful agents for change with migrant and refugee communities.
We recognise that migration is a contentious topic but we also believe that the problems we face as individuals cannot be divorced from those we face as a society and a global community. Like it or not, our world is hurtling to destruction, either environmental or of our own making through our inability to resolve conflicts in more sophisticated ways, and we have a shared responsibility in mitigating the harms that our own needs are causing for others.
At Scheherazade, we believe that those responsibilities are also an incredible opportunity. Migrants and refugees are masters at creativity, resilience, self-awareness and global thinking and have so much to teach us about the state of our world today. We believe that harnessing the potential of ‘populations on the move’ is far more of an opportunity than a threat. Indeed, it is imperative for us to meet the challenges facing our world today.
For the past 20 years, we have been developing a model for young women to step up to the plates as leaders in their communities, through learning how to lead others in creative education projects that develop the 21st century skills of current and future generations. We are showing that, far from being a burden, a migrant woman armed with extraordinary leadership development, training and education, can be at the forefront of the challenges we face in what it means to be a responsible global citizen.
