Pakistan Student Association

In this blog post, I’ll try give you an overview of the origin of PSA Stockholm and what were the main reasons to have PSA around you in Stockholm. I think most of you have already heard about PSA through different means like, cultural show, reception of students or by sports event(s) etc.

Let me take you back to 2005 since PSA took its motivation from that year. I came to Sweden, during August 2005 without knowing anyone here before. Luckily I got in touch with some of my batch mates already in Pakistan and planned my journey for Sweden. After stepping in to Swedish soil, we never expected any reception from anyone since none of us have any contact in Sweden. Our study period was started and surprisingly we were invited by some of our senior Pakistani students for an orientation session (keep in mind that no concept of PSA yet discovered). It was a very helping session indeed in which we received almost basics of student life in Sweden. Time passed so quickly and we become the seniors next year for new comers in 2006. Most of the students tried to help new comers on individual’s basis and some of them arranged an orientation session once again. Even some students went to Airport & Central station to guide new comers to their very first day in Sweden.

“Should we reinvent the wheel every year“, that was the question which came into mind of some senior students of 2005 batch. They started brain storming sessions and tried to plan a strategy for helping new students next year through a platform rather than doing individually. It’s hard to name everyone who has been involved in the foundation of PSA Stockholm but Ozair Nazir Kafray. Based on all those brain storming sessions, Ozair, with his team made a conclusion to stop reinventing the wheel and try to work in managed way through a platform. The team started by talking to all the stake holders that is Pakistani Embassy in Stockholm, International Student Advisor at KTH, the Pakistani students in Stockholm and PSA Sweden.

At last in 2007 PSA Stockholm was founded and Ozair was appointed as 1st President of PSA Stockholm until the first election of PSA along with Farooq Ahmad as General Secretary and Murtaza Sabir as Finance Secretary. In that short time, working board had managed to write its constitution which has been approved by Student Union in Stockholm University earlier this year.  As per constitution working board is actually a group of three elected members as President, General Secretary and Finance Secretary.

PSA Stockholm aims to play a dual role. Firstly, that of facilitating current and prospective Pakistani students by organizing practical information and creating awareness about the Swedish culture in contrast to social and cultural norms in Pakistan. Secondly, we aim to raise awareness about the culture and identity of Pakistan amongst the diverse student community of Stockholm by arranging Pakistani cultural festivals and information dissemination through our website and seminars.

First elected working board of PSA Stockholm (Shujahat Samandar as president, Junaid Tarar as General Secretary and Sammar Abbas as Finance Secretary) took charge from the pioneers in October 2009. Newly elected board played an outstanding role to make PSA a successful association. Apart from other contributions, working board managed to register PSA Stockholm in Södertörns Högskola and Stockholm university student unions. Last but not least they had arranged a successful event, “Pakistan cultural Festival” in KTH main campus which was 1st ever event of that kind.

Second election of PSA Stockholm was held in April 2010. Sohail Safdar as President, Muhammad Farooq as General Secretary and Sharique Javaid as Finance Secretary of PSA Stockholm. Active working board has done some changes in organizational structure to achieve their goals for their tenure. Active working board has been doing tremendously well and arranged 1st ever inter-university cricket tournament which was one of their best events since they took charge earlier this year.

As previous years, PSA Stockholm has been doing some proactive measures to facilitate the new students to Sweden. I hope members of PSA Stockholm will come forward once again to make all necessary arrangement.

Good luck PSA.

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Tags: PSA Stockholm

This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 10:36 am and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.