The Norwich Record | Summer 2018

Fareed Ahmadi ’18 speaks four languages—Dari, Pashto, Urdu, and English. He was born in Pakistan, but Afghanistan is his home. The business management major first heard of Norwich University while studying in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, from an American aid worker who helped him apply. In his essay, Ahmadi shared a dream: to one day start a dairy in his beleaguered nation. “We are a weak state,” he says. “We need help.” Now a newly minted alum, the Honors Program grad plans to spend some years working and attending graduate school. But he hasn’t lost sight of his original dream—to return to Afghanistan and start a dairy to help lift his fellow citizens out of poverty. “People have lots of cows and goats,” Ahmadi says. The future social entrepreneur would buy their milk, process it into cheese and yogurt, and sell those goods in the big cities. “We import lots of those products from Iran and Pakistan. We could produce that. It’s not a very difficult process. It needs some investment, but it’s doable.” Like Ahmadi himself, it seems a dream both modest and profound.

Text & photo by Sean Markey