OPP - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Memorial Trust
• Principal of Comilla Victoria College

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board of Directors of

Perween Rahman was an internationally renowned architect, planner and social scientist. She studied architecture at the Department of Architecture and Planning at the Dawood College of Engineering and Technology (DCET). In the five year course, she acquired the first position and gold medals in four. She qualified in 1982 and began working as an intern with the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) which the renowned South Asian Social Scientist Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan had initiated in 1980 in Orangi Township. Here she worked at the OPP's mission of upgrading informal settlements by supporting their communities in building sanitation and water supply infrastructure, schools, and improving housing. Within one year, in 1983, she became the Joint Director (Technical) of the project. In 1985 Perween Rahman was awarded a prestigious Scholarship on the basis of her work to study at the Institute of Housing Studies at Rotterdam, Holland. In 1988 she was appointed the Director of OPP-Research and Training Institute (OPP-RTI) and Secretary of the Board. In 1989 she became the founding member of the Urban Resource Center (URC), Karachi, later replicated in numerous Asian cities. In 1999 with Akhtar Hameed Khan's passing away she took complete control of the direction of the institute and ably led it to the fame and prestige that it has today. Thus while Perween Rahman played a key role in the evolution of the project in its early years, after 1999 she became its main visionary. Perween Rahman represented the OPP-RTI at various National and International Conferences and Workshops on Development and Social Rights in United Kingdom, United States of America, Switzerland, Stockholm, South Korea, Phillipines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Kenya, South Africa, Namibia, Japan and Holland. After 1999 her relationship with various international organizations consolidated and they increasingly depended on Perween Rahman's research work for their projects and teaching. These organizations include, Several International organizations have expressed their desire to preserve the memory and legacy of Perween Rahman's work. Perween Rahman leaves behind a nationally and internationally best known Pakistani Community Development NGO, and one that has been cited as the most successful Poverty Alleviation Program in the world.