Dina has actively contributed to community development in Pakistan since she was only 3 ½ years old. She has actively participated in several activities including Child Leadership Development Workshops, Social Entrepreneurship Conferences, Thalassemia Awareness Ambassador Training , flood relief, environment activities and taking part in conducting art activities at the SEPLAA Foundation adopted school for underprivileged children. Since the age of 4 she had been creating 3 day models with paper and recycled material, showing an early inclination towards art and conservation. Dina was the first Pakistani child to receive a ‘Thank You’ letter for her art work on the environment and is in the top 2000 at the age of 7 for the International Painting Competition ‘In My Homeland’ held by Green Cross Belarus. Out of 15,500 entries from 31 different countries all over the world, only a few hundred got ‘Thank you letters.’
The significance of child development in Punjab, Pakistan was highlighted by Dina at a UNICEF Consultative Session conducted in Summer 2013, where she was the youngest participant to come forward with suggestions to give to representatives of 30 NGOs present. Dina was also the youngest to speak at the Inter School Poetry Competition at the Sharif Education Complex and at the Khayal Literature Festival in 2013.
In 2016, as part of her project for the SYLC ‘Creativity For Change Semester’, she developed the SEPLAA YLC Botanical Garden by planting trees and developing a roof top garden to help promote green architecture in Lahore. She has also taken active part in youth policy dialogues on climate change adaptation held under the semester. In addition to this, she conducted numerous activities with underprivileged children in Lahore in critical thinking, art and climate change awareness.
Dina participated as the youngest delegate amongst 800 international delegates from 60 countries at the 3-Day 5th Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Dina was also selected as the youngest and only Pakistani speaker for the Global Youth Forum on Climate Change in Colombo, where 200 Sri Lankan and international youth and academics participated. She presented her paper on ‘Climate Resilient Development: Promoting Green Architecture for homes and offices.’
Dina loves to create art work from recycled items and has been creating jewelry and clay models since she was 4 years old. She runs her page ‘Dina’s Crafty Cats’ . She is presently developing and completing the art work for the social enterprise book project ‘Journey of a Hundred Leaves’ (forthcoming 2022), in which she is documenting the work she did with over 1000 underprivileged and special children in Pakistan on awareness about climate change adaptation, peace and critical thinking through art, theatre and dialogues. She has conducted activities with underprivileged children at Ameen Maktab, Alam Bibi Trust, Rising Sun School for Special Children and SOS Children’s Village.
She was invited as the youngest opening plenary speaker at the 6th Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum held at the Asian Development Bank head quarters in Manila, Philippines in October 2018.
Dina is an artist and likes to explore and blog about what art means to her. She has a keen interest in art, climate change, social entrepreneurship and is passionate about cooking and travelling.