Founder and CEO of Goats for Water to join the newest class of 20 global visionaries, sharing their big ideas throughout the events planned for 2021.

Entrepreneur Fariel Salahuddin has been selected as a TED Fellow, joining a class of 20 remarkable individuals who are collaborating across disciplines to spark positive change around the world.

“The TED Fellows Program recognizes people at work on world-changing ideas, offering them tools to amplify the power of their vision. Each year, a new group of Fellows from around the world, and from every discipline, are welcomed into this incredible international community of remarkable thinkers and doers who have shown unusual accomplishment, exceptional courage, and the potential to create positive change in their respective fields.”

Fariel has been selected for her company  Goats for Water that 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. In doing so, her aim is 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.  “The TED Fellows program is very significant in Goats for Water’s journey. I am grateful for the powerful platform, network, and tools that it provides to fulfill our objective of taking our work to reduce inequality and poverty for the rural poor in other developing countries,” said Fariel Salahuddin who is the founder and CEO of Goats for Water.

Goats for Water (corporate identity UpTrade) has been active in Pakistan since 2017. 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 own 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 with the aim to expand this work to other countries.

“We’re incredibly proud to introduce the newest cohort of TED Fellows,” said program director Shoham Arad, “The TED Fellows Program has never felt more relevant and more necessary.

Founded in 2009, the TED Fellows program now has 512 Fellows from 100 countries. In its twelve-year history, the TED Fellows program has built a powerful, far-reaching network made up of scientists, doctors, activists, artists, entrepreneurs, inventors, journalists, and interdisciplinary collaborators.