Be A World of Good
Dashni Amin’s memory of her life as a young child in Pakistan, moving from place to place — sometimes in apartments, sometimes in refugee camps — is faint. But her parents, Kurdish Iraqis who fled from Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime, both understood that education was a privilege — and this is something Dashni will never forget. “My parents made education this beautiful, otherworldly, amazing thing,” Dashni says. “I’ve always been very conscious of how privileged I am to get an education.”
Dashni’s parents and their growing family lived in Pakistan for 10 years before finally gaining asylum in the U.S., and their focus on their children’s education never waned. Even while scraping by in low-income housing in Kent, they made many sacrifices to ensure that their children had the supplies and support necessary to excel in school.
And excel they did. Dashni remained committed to her studies and, at just age 16, entered the University of Washington through the Academy for Young Scholars, one of the Robinson Center’s early entrance programs. None of this would have been possible, though, without the generous support of the Mary Gates Honors Scholarship. “Without this scholarship, I wouldn’t have been able to entrench myself in this whole new life,” Dashni says. “My range of experiences exploded from that of a sheltered, impoverished immigrant to a young student activist with material resources.”
Dashni threw herself into academics and extracurricular activities at the UW. She paired her passion for helping others with hands-on experiences in philanthropy: first, as a student caller in the UW Foundation’s Office of Annual Giving, then, as executive events director of the Student Philanthropy Education Program (SPEP), and finally, as co-chair of the Senior Class Gift.
Now a senior, Dashni is majoring in Law, Societies & Justice. Her latest philanthropic project is the unexpected result of an Honors Program course she took in the summer of 2013. The course, titled “In Your Name: Education Inside Prison,” took her and a dozen Honors Program classmates to the Twin Rivers Unit, part of the Monroe Correctional Complex. Students met weekly with inmates, where they discussed readings and wrote response papers about the importance of higher education in prison.
Dashni was so inspired by, as she puts it, “the prisoners’ zeal for education,” that she founded Huskies for Opportunities in Prison Education (HOPE), a program that helps improve prisoners’ access to educational materials. Fundraising efforts have since helped create a resource library and a scholarship for at-risk foster children, and plans are in the works for an arts-and-lecture series.
Where will Dashni’s undaunted commitment to helping others take her next? Law school, then perhaps working with women in Muslim countries abroad: “Right now I’m interested in working on human rights in an international framework. I know I could wake up with a fire in my belly as an activist.”
Dashni’s parents always reminded her that along with the privilege of a great education comes great responsibility — a point she’s embraced completely.
“The UW has allowed me to do great things,” she says. “I want to get the best platform possible so I can be the best advocate I can be.”
Real Dawgs Give Back
Through volunteering, education and community outreach events, the Student Philanthropy Education Program (SPEP) helps give students a much better sense of the role philanthropy plays at the University and in the surrounding community. SPEP participants also have the opportunity to take on leadership roles, gaining the real-world skills that are used to set an ambitious philanthropic agenda in motion. “Our main goal is to inspire the spirit of philanthropy in this younger generation,” says Dashni. “We want to communicate the beauty of giving.”