50 Faces – Community builder Nazira Tareen
Posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2017
It takes a village to raise a child, but it takes people like Nazira Tareen to ensure that village has a strong foundation.
Tareen has devoted herself to building and nurturing communities in Ottawa since graduating from the Early Childhood Education program in 1973.
When Tareen came to Ottawa from India almost half a century ago, she knew Kannada well, but not so much about Canada.
Kannada, a classical Indian language preserved in the south Indian state of Karnataka, was one of a number of languages, including Urdu and English, Tareen spoke when she emigrated with her husband in 1968. But Canada she had to learn about, and her earliest education came from her fellow Early Education students.
“The training I received at Algonquin is so valuable, even after so many years I treasure it very much,” Tareen says. “I have applied what I learned at Algonquin to my work, my own children, and now my grandchildren.”
Algonquin was just two years old when the college introduced Early Childhood Education in 1969, and Tareen was among its first students. “I chose early childhood education because I love children. I came (to Algonquin) and I loved it.”
Tareen was almost a decade older than the other students, but she felt immediately at home. “It really helped me to get to know Canada, because I was with young people, young students,” she recalls. “It was a good introduction to Canadian life.”
These days, as one of the founders of the Ottawa Muslim Women’s Organization, Tareen spends much of her time in similar kinds of cultural sharing – whether helping Canadian high school students understand Islam, or helping Canadian Muslims get a broader view of their country. Currently, she is working with an Algonquin Nation elder to organize a blanket ceremony – a unique way of teaching Indigenous history – for Ottawa imams.
Indigenous people have suffered for centuries in Canada, Tareen says, and the Canadian Muslim community can contribute to making things right. “When you help someone else, you rise above your own problems,” she says.
She got her own helping hand while attending Algonquin College. In the second year of her program, Tareen discovered she was pregnant and decided to drop out. Her fellow students and the instructors wouldn’t let her leave quietly. “They said, ‘Oh, Nazira, we’re coming to your house to have tea with you’. I said, ‘Sure, come,’ so they all came and surprised me with a baby shower.”
After the birth of a son and then a daughter, Tareen returned to the College to finish her last semester on a part-time basis. Education, she says, is fundamentally important, particularly for women.
“If you have knowledge, if you have education, nobody can bully you, can subjugate you. You can be your own person.”
When Tareen first attended Algonquin College, there were fewer than 500 Muslims in the city, and not a single mosque to serve them. Today, followers of Islam number in the tens of thousands and attend 13 mosques in Ottawa.
Tareen was involved in fund-raising for Ottawa’s first mosque in Westboro. When it opened in 1977, she was able to put her College training to use, teaching classes to pre-school children for the mosque’s Sunday school program. For decades, she has also presented annual workshops on Islam to Grade 11 students as part of the Ottawa Catholic School Board’s world religion program.
Through the Ottawa Muslim Women’s Organization, she reaches out to new Canadians and helps with fundraising for the broader Ottawa community. The Heart Institute, CHEO, and The Royal Ottawa Hospital are just a few of charities the Ottawa Muslim Women’s Organization has endowed.
Asked why she is still so involved, she answers with emotion in her voice: “Because Canada has given a lot to us. Because I was blessed.”
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