When I was about 13 I decided that I wanted to spend my life making as much of a difference for people as possible. I started working in various areas like the climate movement and the clothing industry (I worked in Pakistan to improve working conditions in clothing factories) doing filmmaking and marketing, which has been a profession for me for many years.

 

After experiencing similar problems, I realised that my passion was elsewhere, creating something new that could actually help all these areas at the same time, I realised my purpose was to foster human connection. That’s when I started thinking of something my mom had been doing since I was a kid.

 

She had been creating workshops and exercises where people would stand and look each other in the eyes and share personal things with each other. She called them Heart Meetings. I saw now how it moved conversations from the head - from thinking, opinions and judgement, to the heart - to feeling, sharing and listening. And I saw that when people speak to each other from that place, it creates something that transcends any opinion or judgement. Because no matter who you are, you need to be seen, you need to be heard, you need to feel loved and you need to feel that you have a purpose in life. That’s when I decided that this is what my contribution to the world would be, to open up those meetings between people, open up the world to connection, and in that way, change the world.

 

In 2024 we started HejHumans, an organisation and initiative to bring more connection, more empathy and more kind curiocity into the world in order to solve our biggest challenges. We also started groups for creating connection in a very practical way, where we guide people into exercises in relating, listening and sharing with one another. Since it’s grown rapidly and we are now hundreds of people in our community and the feedback we get is just amazing.

 

Our short term goal is to grow these groups and have more of them, and to start a community centre with a café for connection where we can bring all of this together. We want to create a safe and open space for people to meet and be human together. At the same time we are doing public projects and events like going on the street and talking to people and creating connections.

 

Our long term goal is to create many of these spaces in every major city in the world. Along with this we want to teach the methods and exercises so that they can be executed in many places independently. We also plan to adapt the method so it can be implemented in for example workplaces, education, events, groups, organisations, etc. Here we want to teach as many as possible about the methods so it can be introduced in a productive way. Together with this we have started online content for spreading knowledge and inspiration about the power of human connection!

 

I believe that every person longs for some kind of connection, and in a world that is becoming more and more distrustful, extreme and separated, we want to unite around what we humans have in common, because we are much more alike than we are different.