Meet the Youth Advisory Board.
Yasmeen Obeid
Yasmeen Obeid is a Muslim-Palestinian Community Organizer, Advocate, child of immigrants, and a recent Ethnic Studies’ Honors graduate from the University of California, San Diego, where she completed a 64-pages-long thesis on how student and faculty advocates for Palestine and the Palestinian people are criminalized, radicalized, and marginalized on college campuses. She was recently elected as a delegate for the 71st Assembly District in California. She currently serves as an Advisory Board member with Borderlands for Equity, as the Advocacy & Campaigns Coordinator for the Arab Resource Center in El Cajon, Majdal Center, and as the Community Partnerships Chair with the Feminist Front. She also recently accepted the role of Youth Organizer at Mid-City Community Advocacy Network, where she will mobilize and organize City Heights residents and youth to build political and community power.
Khadijah Abdulmateen
Khadijah Abdulmateen found her passion for community organizing and community work in the 10th grade. As a Black American, Khadijah has seen much injustice within her community, such as over-policing, criminalizing youth, and surveillance pushing her to work further and support her community. Since attending a youth leadership summit, Khadijah has heavily involved herself through justice work and educated herself on issues affecting her communities, such as surveillance, police brutality in Black and Brown communities, and youth justice work. Khadijah currently serves as Advocacy Initiatives Director for MSA West, where she oversees the Islamic Sacred Activism cohort, which trains students to become effective community organizers through the Islamic Framework. Along with MSAW, Khadijah work as an Emergency Resource Ambassador where she, along with her team complies and share resources in San Diego with youth ages 16-25. After college, Khadijah hopes to involve herself in policy work and youth development by implementing pathways necessary for low-income youth of color to explore options and provide opportunities essential to develop skills needed for their future endeavors.
Ameer Chaudry
Ameer Chaudry is an undergraduate student at University of California San Diego studying Clinical Psychology and Ethnic Studies. Having grown up Muslim in the United States during the War on Terror, Ameer always had a very politicized existence that forced him to be an active member of his communities. This early exposure of alienating rhetoric sparked a disposition to question the status quo and understand disenfranchised perspectives through immersion in those respective communities. Since then, Ameer has been involved in many grassroots organizations and worked for countless communities to push for equity for all. Recently he has worked for a student initiated, governed, and run resource center on the UCSD campus, working for educational equity in the San Diego area, namely with East county Muslim refugees. Looking to the future, Ameer hopes to work on mental health initiatives for said community and plans on integrating social justice, public health, and clinical psychology to serve the most severely marginalized people.
Sarah Farouq
Sarah Farouq background’s specializes in community organizing and advocacy in her various capacities in local and statewide organizations. As a Muslim immigrant and an Iraqi refugee, Sarah’s personal experiences have shaped her passions in her community work and activism. She has been engaged in fighting state-sanctioned violence, specifically advocating against the surveillance, policing, and exclusion of Black and brown communities. In her previous capacities as a community organizer at local and national nonprofits, she has helped organize campaigns in issue areas, such as: immigration justice (through advocacy to close detention centers), criminal injustice (mass incarceration and gang documentation), and youth justice (addressing higher education and surveillance on students). Also a recent political science graduate of UC Berkeley, Sarah plans to eventually earn her Juris Doctor and continue to advocate for marginalized communities impacted by systemic injustice from a legal capacity and uplift their issues on a policy level.
Suaad Nour
Suaad Nour is a first generation Muslim Somali-American from San Diego. She currently attends UC Berkeley and is pursuing a simultaneous degree in Business Administration and Legal Studies. There, Suaad serves as a student body representative for the UC Berkeley Housing Security Fee Grant Oversight Committee and as an intern for Berkeley’s Racism and Criminal Justice Group where she reports on the cities’ transition to the new Police Accountability Board. She is also an Experience Berkeley High School Program Coordinator, in which she manages and supports a caseload of twelve low-income Black students within their transition to higher education. Suaad intends to pursue a law degree post-undergrad in order to continue her social justice and advocacy efforts.
Luqmaan Bokhary
Luqmaan Bokhary is a Pakistani Muslim organizer from San Diego, CA. He is finishing his Bachelor's degree in Public Policy and South Asian Studies at Brown University. He is particularly interested in issues of racial justice, immigrant/refugee rights, and creating educational resources and opportunities for the communities he is a part of. In San Diego, he has served as the Advocacy and Legal Fellow at Borderlands for Equity, where he organized around human rights and racial justice. He has also contributed to Muslim civic engagement in San Diego County by working on connecting Muslim youth with progressive campaigns, voter registration, and voter education. In addition, he was a part of the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Congressional Leadership Development Program, through which he interned at the United States Senate and was awarded the Padi Fellowship to work at a refugee education NGO in Indonesia.
Ali-Reza Torabi
My name is Ali-Reza Torabi. I moved to the United States in 1995 from Iran. I am a first generation Iranian immigrant who has navigated living in this country, undocumented and unafraid. Though this country did not give birth to me, it has helped raise me. And with help from my family and my immigrant community, I have utilized my experiences to pave my path as a future physician. I am a medical student at Loyola Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago. I am working to build my platform so that I can continue to advocate with even more force, commitment and passion. I want to nothing more than to become the type of physician my community needs; the type of physcian I wish I had during my time as an undocumented youth in this country. At the core of what I am striving for as not only a physician, but also as a human being, is fighting for the dignity, respect and rights of all those continually oppressed. That is why I am proud to be part of such a powerful organization like Borderlands for Equity, as we work to dismantle misogyny, white supremacy and bigotry in our borderlands and beyond.
Nedy Velazquez
Nedy Velazquez is the North County Community Organizer for Justice Overcoming Boundaries, a non-profit interfaith organization in San Diego. Nedy immigrated to the United States as a child and is passionate about organizing for her immigrant community. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science with an emphasis in American Politics from the University of California San Diego (UCSD). As a college student, she worked as Policy Intern for UCSD's Undocumented Student Services Center and developed the Legislative Advocacy Program, a 2-quarter program that creates leaders through social and political advocacy, teaching students about the legislative process and fundamentals of lobbying. Nedy was the first Borderlands for Equity Advocacy Fellow last year amid the Black Lives Matter Movement. She cares deeply about intersectionality, intentionality, and building strong and meaningful relationships in her organizing work.
Dania Taki
My name is Dania, and I’m a biology major and anthropology minor transferring from Miramar College. I am originally from Damascus, Syria, and I came to the United States 4 years ago from Saudi Arabia. I am passionate about social justice, public health, and activism. My commitment to social responsibility makes Borderlands for Equity an ideal vehicle for putting my values into action. My experiences in the Middle East empower me to advocate both politically and when volunteering at the hospital, which constantly affirms and elevates my sense of purpose. In Borderlands for Equity, I hope to shed light on narratives lost in conflict and the voices of the oppressed. I hope to ultimately use my own voice to advocate for family and friends in the Middle East as a physician.