SE Spotlight - Besma Soltan

Twice a month, we profile a young social entrepreneur in our community who answers 5 questions. If you know of someone who should be profiled, let us know!

Besma Soltan runs SPEAKout Poetry, a platform for Canada’s budding talents to express themselves through the art of Spoken Word, unrestrained by social prejudices, religious orientation or cultural boundaries.

Check out their next spoken word competition, Summer Slam 2010, this Aug. 6, 2010 at the ROM.

1) What are you working on and why does it matter?

I am working on SPEAKout, a spoken word competition that started only a year ago, and has done 3 events ever since, with our 4th grand event coming up this Aug. 6 at the ROM.

Through SPEAKout, I was not only able to grow my network and improve my skills, along with gaining new ones, but I also grew as a person through the experiences that myself and the rest of the SPEAKout team went through in order to make the events happen. Working in a grassroots organization and seeing it grow is like becoming a mother; the bigger and better your baby grows, the more proud you are of it and the deeper in love you fall for it.

SPEAKout did not not only introduce me to the spoken word scene, but advanced and improved my knowledge of many issues out there, increasing my awareness through the topics performed by our poets, and through the people I got to know in it and because of it.

SPEAKout also matters because it aims to engage Canada with all its diversity and multiculturalism, and show all of Canada that there is much more that brings us together than what pushes us apart.

2) What motivates you?

My faith has a large role in motivating me, plus having one of my personal life goals being to really make a difference in the world while I am in it, regardless of how small that difference may be, even if it means planting a seed that I won’t see branch out into a tree in my lifetime. I also gain a lot of motivation and push forward through those around me, be it family, friends, colleagues, or very ordinary people that are full of strength and the power to keep going against all odds.

3) What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned recently?

That bad things always happen, whether we like it or not. The trick is to see the positive and good out of it all, and to have that experience gained act as a lesson to push one forward, rather than have them stumble along the way and fall and never get up. I also learnt that a smile and a kind word can go a long way, even if one doesn’t see their results instantaneously. Lastly, I learnt that change is actually possible. One just has to be patient and in constant pursuit of their goals.

4) If you could invite 5 people dead or alive to dinner, who would they be?

Prophet Mohammad, Ghandi, Einstein, Ibn Rushd/Averroes, and my great grandfather.

5) Best resource people don’t know about?

We teach some by what we say. We teach more by what we do. We teach most by who we are. – Be the change you want to be; You can’t make change happen if you aren’t doing it yourself.