Beyond Borders

By Rida Kamal, Anjali Balani, Usman Adnan, and Alina Asim

What began as a modest effort during the COVID-19 lockdown, became a

revolutionary project for years and generations to come. With impact that wide
spans beyond AIESEC, this project really made a profound impression beyond
borders. With over five successful cycles, Beyond Borders initiated by AIESEC
in Lahore conducted its fifth cycle in 2022. The main goal of this cycle was to
provide students with a sense of exchange while sitting in their homes, or to
provide them with the experience of a remote international internship, as we
manage to gather participants from all over the world in all of our cycles, and
from 18 cities in Pakistan alone. This cycle has traditionally emphasized
empowering young and encouraging participants to contribute to society by
working on the United Nations' seventeen Sustainable Development Goals,
which seek to make the world a better place for everybody. Cycle 4 was a huge
hit too with 80+ participants, partners lik4 Team Musafir, WWF and Akhuwat.
This was the first cycle to open director position application nationally and
internationally. One director was from AIESEC in NUST and another one was
from AIESEC in Pune (India). It was a one of its kind collaboration with
AIESEC in Pune, which rendered genuinely greater impact.

Beyond Borders has held activities like planting, recycling, clothes drives and
much more to make the participants more aware about their basic
responsibilities as humans. It always partners with well-known NGOs, and
they conduct their sessions and share in detail about what they do. To sum it
up, Beyond Borders is gaining popularity among youth in every cycle since they
make efforts in all cycles to make the program more engaging than the last
time and more and more people are getting to know about AIESEC and eagerly
waiting for the next cycle to begin.

The impact within the entity was promotion of more knowledge among
members & nonmembers of what AIESEC does via beyond borders through
physical marketing, & virtual booths at virtual job fair. As a result,more people
signed up for AIESEC recruitment drives as they were interested in
experiencing change with AIESEC.Cycle 4 hosted AIESEC in Pune as
collaborators as well which increased the potential for better IR. Future impact
is mainly empowerment of people, better awareness about UN’s SDGs, social
impact in-terms of the SDGs and advocacy for a sustainable future. Beyond
borders is open to expansion be it international or national.
To conclude the Cycle 5 made donations to ‘Akhuwat’ for their clothes bank,
colleges & universities in both cycles 5.0 and 4.0 with the latter peaking at
above 100,000 RS. while Cycle 4 administered a drive for plantation &
recycling. Cycle 3 organized donations for ‘The Citizens Foundation’ &
‘Akhuwat’, again with monetary compensations peaking above 100,000 RS.
Quite a bit of work was done towards UN’s SDGs. Due to Beyond borders,
many students found out about organizations via the speaker sessions where
representatives from said companies spoke & interacted with students and
hence found internship opportunities they hosted. It is truly serves as a one of
a kind, noble project and we wish the future teams best of luck for driving
change and truly inspiring beyond borders!