Arsheen Dhalla, BN’10: Nursing expertise with global impact

Arsheen Dhalla is passionate about building global bridges. After graduation, Dhalla honed her nursing skills with Pure North S’Energy, a non-profit provider of preventative wellness programs across Canada. She then transitioned to her fulltime role with the Daraja Foundation (“bridge” in Swahili), the non-profit foundation and charity which she started in Zanzibar, Tanzania. She relocated to the East African city last year.

“I didn’t know what Daraja would look like a few years after the first board of director’s meeting in 2013,” reflects Dhalla today. “At that meeting, I sat around a table with six women who were eager to hear a story, who then selflessly offered their time to support an idea that originated on the other side of the world.”

Since then, more than 50 volunteers have travelled to Zanzibar with Daraja, creating a network of projects that continue to grow. Registered as a charity in Canada and Tanzania, the foundation aims to create sustainable communities through its support of education and improvement to health and nutrition. One initiative is a program with a local school and orphanage in Zanzibar. Another supports a hospital and the Kanga Maternity Trust, through equipment donations and fundraising, to improve health care for mothers in Zanzibar.

For her remarkable achievements in less than a decade of registered nursing, Dhalla was honoured with a UCalgary Arch Alumni Achievement Award in November 2016. The faculty also hosted a reception to celebrate the success, the second Arch Award to be received by an alumna (Susan Smith, BN’75, received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2008).

Daraja’s Calgary network includes the Calgary Children’s Cottage Society which helps enrich current programming in family health and nutrition.

Dhalla plans to grow the foundation, continue her education and work as a community health nurse in Zanzibar.

“I see Daraja like a child that is being raised by a global community,” she proudly says. “We continue to learn, grow and adapt
with this guidance, and share that strength and compassion with so many more people.”