Pakistan's Fariel Salahuddin selected for the Cartier Women’s Impact Award

Fariel Salahuddin from Pakistan has been selected to receive the Cartier Women’s Impact Award for her entrepreneurial venture.

Cartier Women’s Initiative is celebrating its 15th anniversary by awarding nine former fellows who have been selected for the extraordinary impact that their businesses have achieved over the years.

The categories that the Impact Awards cover are based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). These are: Improving Lives, Preserving the Planet, and Creating Opportunities.

Fariel has been selected for her company Goats for Water which works with rural communities and smallholder farmers, creating alternative currency mechanisms that enable rural poor to purchase solar water pumps and solar lighting solutions using their livestock as payment.

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Fariel aims to eliminate the affordability barrier that prevents the rural poor from accessing assets that significantly improve the quality of the rural poor’s lives and livelihood.

Since 2017, the Goats for Water has been active in Pakistan and has reached 6,000 farming households, with access to solar and water for 42,000 people. The company has been serving customers at Eid for Qurbani and, in 2019, began serving Pakistani meat companies with animals for domestic meat consumption and export.

This year Goats for Water is launching its meat brand and is tapping into the $7.8 billion domestic and halal meat export market served by Pakistan in the GCC. Goats for Water is expanding its work in Pakistan through partnerships and is now working with partners in the Netherlands, Kenya, and Uganda to expand this work to other countries.

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On the 6th of March, 2022, three former fellows out of the nine selected will be recognized in each of the three categories. The first-place, second-place, and third-place awardees will be announced during the Impact Awards Ceremony in Dubai.

Fariel has over ten years of international experience in energy finance, project development, and energy policy. She is also an energy specialist working on off-grid program design, energy policy, and renewable tariffs. She has worked in Indonesia, Egypt, Pakistan, and MENA region with policy reform and project development.

Fariel has a Master of Public Administration, International Finance from Columbia, and a Bachelors of Science in Economics from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).