Both faced a forced marriage when they were teenagers. Both were shunned by their families when they rejected the marriage. Both women later founded nonprofit organizations to help other women and girls escape forced marriages.
One of the women is Fraidy Reiss, Unchained’s founder and executive director. The other is one of her role models, Jasvinder Sanghera, founder and CEO of Karma Nirvana in the UK.
Fraidy and Jasvinder share their surprisingly similar stories – from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean – in the latest episode of BBC’s The Conversation.
“I … was filled with this tremendous sense of gratitude,” Fraidy says of the day she realized she had survived her ordeal and rebuilt her life, and decided to found Unchained. “I thought, ‘Well, I made it. So many women and girls are still back where I was. How can I help them?'”
Hear the full episode here.