Sumair Abbas is a recent graduate of Social Work from the University of Peshawar and is currently working with the Local Government Research & Policy Unit-LGRPU to ensure better governance and service delivery at the local level through data-driven and research-based policy recommendations.
Since his university times, Sumair has been involved in research, social advocacy, social change, students’ rights, innovation and peace. For Sumair, peace is empowerment. With that view, he had consultative meetings with minorities in Peshawar, listened to their issues and with his team advocated for their rights. “Education is the best form of empowerment”, Sumair says. During the covid-19, when the schools were closed, Sumair with the help of an organization distributed over 300 whiteboards in his district and volunteered to teach children in his community during the harsh times of the pandemic. To ensure sustainability, innovation and students’ rights, he founded the Social Work Students’ Association, wrote its constitution and got it approved by the University of Peshawar. The constitution ensures the inclusion of girls and minority students in the cabinet, which independently for social justice and change.

He is a peace writer, who writes for a bilingual magazine Mirror of Society. Currently working as a researcher with the Local Government Elections & Rural Development Department, he is studying the local governance system in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and aims to ensure an inclusive and accountable local governance system which can serve the people at the local level and solve their problems at their doorsteps.