How Misbah Saleem is Breaking Barriers and Creating Opportunities in Khushab

I am Misbah Saleem aka Digital Alchemist. I am a digital Marketer, a seasoned top-rated freelancer, Google and Meta-certified professional, a Chemist, a Trainer, and a Tech Enthusiast. I am the founder of Digital Khushab and Sinf-e-Digital (Both are my initiatives to empower youth, especially females, for the second one). I am a visionary leader who has worked with multiple organizations at leadership positions during my student life. I have worked on the national and international levels. But when I came back to my hometown, District Khushab, I joined the University as a Lecturer. To my whole surprise, I found a huge gap between academia and industry in our region and the shocking one was that there’s no growth mindset in youth. The students, although they have a huge talent, were good in studies and even in co-curricular activities, but they’re blank about their future jobs and opportunities after their graduation. At that time, there were only 2 institutes in whole region who’re providing freelancing training. And even after their courses, there’s no place, event or opportunity for trainees where they could go and solve their real-time problems. Or even if they’re skilled, and not getting much success, the boys used to migrate to other cities like Lahore, Islamabad, Sargodha and the girls either they had to stop their online career or they’re unable to find any authentic platform or opportunity where they can discuss their issues. Also, there’s hardly one software house in the whole region and that’s also houseful; having no opportunities in the digital space for fresh grads. Along with all, I found lots of freelancer profiles who are earning very well but never show up publicly. At the same time, on social media there’re lots of digital communities of specific cities, where the community admins not only provide online sessions and guidance but also, they also used to arrange tech meetups and events where a beginner or a growing freelancer can ask questions directly from experts. To address all these gaps, and lack of opportunities with a leadership mindset and previous leadership and freelancing experience, I decided to create a community in 2022, aka Digital Khushab. The vision was to share my own freelance experience and provide guidance to the students or beginners who want to learn and grow, but they don’t have any proper platform or community or mentor. Also, it’s not only the need of the hour but also at the same time, when there’re lots of local communities with fake working posts; I was on a mission to create such a platform where authentic knowledge would be shared after real-time experience.

As I already told that the main mission behind creating this community was to empower the youth with the right knowledge and direction in the digital space and bridging the gap between academia and industry and not only this but also creating a network of skilled freelancers who share their experience with newbies. Digital Khushab aims to empower and educate the district’s youngsters with digital skills and provide them with proper guidance, roadmaps, and mentorship. Under this umbrella, we have previously organized multiple events, including freelancer meetups, online webinars, and physical sessions and a big tech conference in multiple institutes of District Khushab.

Digital Empowerment means every young person has the right to become a skilled professional by learning digital skills and becoming empowered by earning via practicing those skills. Everyone should get the opportunity to grow in the digital space. The experienced should share their authentic knowledge and newbies should get that without any barrier. If I talk about our region, Khushab, 3-5 years back, there was no awareness about digital skills. People were used to believe the concept of government or private jobs after graduation. They used to think the online field as a scam or never believed could get a sustainable income via freelancing. At that time, there were no job opportunities for skilled persons and there was no community to link the professionals with learners or who could bridge the link between academia and industry. To bring a shift in the Mindset of locals, a massive level campaign was required. It’s not possible with individual effort. But starting this digital community with a few of my students, gradually adding other tech fellows and locals, the providing them a real-time platform which was for everyone’ local businesses, local freelancers, local institutes and in digital space for every person who’s a passionate learner and wants to change their life via career in tech space.

Being a female in a backward region; the journey of Digital Khushab success was not easy at all. There were lots of critisizers and legpullers. And even many (who’re not even credible) want to use this platform for their own marketing. But I am not a leader who sits back just to take over the criticism. I was honest with my efforts regarding community. I am lucky that I got many people of local community who assisted us in managing events as well as those who contributed their knowledge with our community. The community has the sole pride of having the first physical tech meetup and the first tech conference in District Khushab. Alhamdulillah, It is an honor for me to present Digital Khushab as the first drop of rain in networking events and in academia-industry linkage.

As a Techpreneur and founder, my initiatives regarding youth empowerment include:

1. Career Counselling Sessions for students and graduates
2. Providing one-to-one consultation to those who want the roadmap to start their journey towards the online field and to freelancers who are stuck at any point in their growth journey
3. Q&A sessions for everyone regarding freelancing, the online field, Freelancing platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, LinkedIn and other social media platforms, as well as client hunting.
4. Online webinars on multiple topics for youth, either as a speaker or as a host and adding my other freelance fellows as speakers to deliver value to our community with collaborations.
5. Skill learning and Freelance Training Programs (currently online)
6. Freelance Networking meetups for local youngsters of District Khushab.
7. Tech Conferences, along with inviting guest speakers from across the country to provide our youth with the best of the best opportunities that they would otherwise be unable to get in the town.
8. Offering volunteer ship and internship opportunities to students and youngsters to enhance their leadership, community management and digital skills.

In online community, people were appreciating the content that I used to share. When it’s our first ever Let’s connect meetup, we thought that only a handful people will register, but to our surprise, we got 3 times more responses than the slots available, and we had to adjust them. The first meetup has hidden gems that we found on our local level. The interesting fact was that the zero-dollar learners and 6 figures dollar earners, entrepreneurs and agency owners, all were under one floor. Everyone was sharing their knowledge, experience and expertise to the learners. Many new collaborations were made. Some offered their paid courses and training programs for our participants free of cost. And some offered their office space for our upcoming events. Overall, this first-ever meetup was overwhelming and beyond expectations, really a huge success and an initiative for district Khushab by Digital Khushab. After this meetup, we started online webinar series, in which invited speakers were experts from our own community, and content sharing was also consistent. Then we have to plan something big, just like the tech events of big cities, where we can provide networking opportunities to our district youngsters, and they can learn from national-level expert speakers and mentors. And again, Digital Khushab came up with another initiative of first ever tech conference of district khushab and this time we collaborated with University of Education, Lahore, Jaurharabad campus to have them as our venue partner. This academia-industry linkage included students, freelancers, tech experts and university management all under one floor. We also got support from other cities communities like FLCS (Freelance Community Sargodha), and renowned govt and private programs like E-rozgaar Program and Arfa Kareem Technology Incubator. We also invited most of the local vloggers of our district to provide a media coverage, in this way our local talent got a platform too. This time audience response was amazing, as there’s always a thirst for such remarkable events in our district. And our community showed their interest and joined us. So, overall, we are the only community who’s showing up such amazing physical events for youth of district Khushab.

Gen-Z wants earlier success,they lack consistency and thinks that just after a course and training, they’ll start earning in dollars. This mindset needs to be changed.

There are lots of so-called trainers in the market who sell courses with a basic level skillset but charge a hefty amount. If our youth develop the habit of self-learning and choose the courses and mentors wisely, the success ratio in the digital field can increase.

Adaptation to advancement in technology is the need of the hour. What youth learns today may change or update in the next few hours or very next day, so they have to keep themselves up to date with current industrial trends and market updates.

Youth thinking about a course or training is that, if they were to enroll in the xyz course, their success would be guaranteed, but there are lots of ups and downs after skill learning in the practicing and experimenting phase as well as when they enter market.

There is a huge amount of youth that’s unable to hunt client or get orders from freelancing platforms because their technical skills part is good, but they lack communication and interpersonal skills, along with sales and marketing skills. All of them are equally important along with technical skillset.

I think Pakistan is in the era of tech and digital revolution. Wave of freelancing and ecommerce has reached to every small town, street and corner. The only need is proper focus, consistency and commitment and future millionaires are in process of making. I can see most of them belong to the young generation. Youth are getting digital literacy, they want to do something for their own and for their families. People now know that formal education is not enough to survive in the current market. They are all in the race of financial stability. And online field has space for everyone to grow. So, the digital future of our youth would be bright.

Anyone who is going to start their digital projects or startups, here are a few pieces of advice from my side:

1. Never put all of your eggs in one basket (have multiple sources of income)
2. Must learn financial literacy along with skillset and entrepreneurship
3. Failure is a part of success, so at any stage you feel down or disheartened, first think about your “Why”, why did you start this venture?
4. It’s okay to get help, guidance and mentorship at any stage of your journey.
5. As a founder, it’s not necessary that you are a master of every skillset; you can have a co-founder with another skillset to make a great combo.
6. It’s not necessary that you are the only smart person in your venture. Hire people smarter than you, empower them with good resources and eventually you will find a good success rate in your business.
7. Invest in digital assets along with your services.

Definitely, we are already on this mission. And all of our online sessions, trainings, webinars and consultations are for everyone from anywhere without any location boundaries. This Digital Khushab wave is already spreading. We have noticed, people from other regions are inspired by our initiatives and are also creating communities like us. There are a few examples like just our recent event days, We found a new local community, “Digital Qaidabad”, similarly in some other cities, people are approaching us that they also want to create such amazing communities in their own regions. Also, we are in the process of multiple collaborations with other cities. Hopefully, there would be many new initiatives announced soon under the umbrella of Digital Khushab.

I will just say “Start doing whatever you want to do or love to do, don’t waste too much time in planning and overthinking. Sky is the limit. Leadership, especially young leadership, has no boundaries. Firstly, empower yourself, invest in your own growth. And when you become empowered, start empowering others. At last, but not the least, I would just say, If I can do being a female among lots of naysayers and from a small district, then why not you!! Good Luck 🙂 For the readers of Youth Insight Journal, if you want to ask me any questions regarding freelancing, online earning, Fiverr, Upwork, Content Marketing or social media,

I have already answered 700+ questions with 150k+ views across the globe, on these topics, with my own experience. Hope you will get a lot from here. Thank You