For Homaira Hosseini, immigrating to the United States from Afghanistan and adapting to a world very different from her own did not hinder the heights that she would reach.
Hosseini, who served this year as president of the UCLA’s undergraduate student government, was recently selected as the student speaker for the College of Letters and Science commencement ceremony at Pauley Pavilion on June 12.
“I feel very honored to be able to convey to my graduating class all the emotions and excitement we have experienced together and to be able to speak a bit about my personal experience here at UCLA,” she said.
Throughout her college career, Hosseini endeavored to make her experience at UCLA extend beyond academic pursuits and became involved with countless community service organizations, as well as student leadership, she said.
Her involvement in the UCLA community to help the disadvantaged stemmed from her own childhood experiences, she said.
Hosseini was two years old when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan and imprisoned her father, a justice of the highest court of the nation. She grew up with three other siblings and spoke an unkempt mingle of English, Farsi and Urdu at home, due to the many countries to which they traveled.
Her family first fled to India after her father’s escape from prison, and two years later, they immigrated to Fremont, which is home of the largest Afghan population in the U.S.
The cruelties of war, discrimination and the difficulties of adapting to a different culture distressed her at an early age, she said, as did her return visit to Afghanistan in 1994, where she witnessed the poverty and chilling oppression that governed the lives of families under the control of the Taliban.
As a result, she became aware of the power that lies in the hands of a single individual.
“Barriers are what you make of them, and you can break them all down,” she said. “They exist because they are meant to be broken down.”
She made helping the underprivileged one of her life’s goals and used her family’s story and the injustices she witnessed as motivation for maneuvering across a large university like UCLA and finding her niche in student government and community service, where she could better help those in need.
As USAC president, she helped to coordinate the first “Thinking Globally, Acting Locally” conference, which raised students’ awareness about global issues.
She also helped to establish Bruins in the City, which works to place students on Los Angeles city commissions.
“This achievement gives students a voice equal to all the other commissioners in the room,” she said.
Hosseini also organized the first BruINTENT campout event to raise funds for homeless students on campus and in the greater L.A. area, and she developed a tuition payment plan likely to take effect next year, which would enable students to pay fees in installments, rather than all at once.
It is her depth of experience and the uncompromising determination with which she fulfilled her endeavors that Hosseini was chosen to be the speaker for her graduating class, said Julie Sina, chief of staff at the College of Letters and Science and member of the committee that selected the student speaker.
“We were looking for a student who was engaged and involved both outside and inside the classroom,” Sina said. “We wanted to see what priority the student places on what it means to be a UC graduate in the world.”
Along with her other achievements at the university, Hosseini volunteered in the Incarcerated Youth Tutorial Program and Mentors for Academic and Peer Support, which provides academic guidance and empowerment to the students of Jordan High School in Watts and offers them access to institutions of higher learning like UCLA.
Thirty students applied for the speaker position, and 11 underwent the selection committee’s interview process, which included campus administrators and commencement coordinators.
These achievements symbolize the message Hosseini wants to send to the 7,000 members of her graduating class ““ that meaningful work springs from a sincere empathy for a cause that benefits the greater good.
“I want to tell my graduating class to be innovative in what they do and to be sincere,” she said.
“Homaira will give her fellow graduates a sense of responsibility for the world,” said Dr. Berky Nelson, administrative representative for the Undergraduate Students Association Council. “She is very accomplished in her own right and has lived herself what she will probably tell students.”
Hosseini said she has gained a sense of hope and optimism from UCLA and that is what she seeks to find in her future endeavors.
After graduation, she plans to participate in the prestigious Coro Fellows leadership training program in San Francisco, where she will continue developing the skills needed for community organization and political problem solving. She added that she plans on attending law school and public policy school soon afterwards.