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Parsiana
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Zoroastrians Abroad

Fabulous over forty

By Parinaz Gandhi · April 21, 2018
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, March 8, 2018, Teenaz Javat was conferred the "40 over forty Absolutely Fabulous Women (AFW)” award. A senior writer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Toronto, Javat’s contribution in the field of advocacy was recognized with a trophy and a citation from the mayor of the City of Mississauga. The other categories considered for the Award are communication, advertising, health care, senior care, education and public service.
As notes the website absolutelyfabulouswomen.com, "The AFW Awards is an initiative created in 2014 to honor 40 women over forty from the Golden Horseshoe Region (a secondary region in southern Ontario, Canada) and give recognition for their achievements, accomplishments, positive contributions in building and keeping a safe, healthy and thriving community.”
"An organization called Boomerpreneur, in collaboration with the cosmetic company Mary Kay and the City of Mississauga hold these awards for the Greater Toronto and Golden Horseshoe area. This was their fifth year of holding these gala awards. They have a panel of five women judges who go through the nominations… Anyone can nominate a woman over 40. I was nominated by my friend Arnavaz Dhabhar who works as a Mississauga Transit bus driver,” Javat responded to Parsiana’s queries.
AFW was founded by Rosanna Penilla-Bharucha (Rosanna is a Filipino married to Rustom Bharucha of Karachi) who, according to the website is "an entrepreneur and believes in giving back to the community.” She is the executive director of The Boomerpreneur and Boomerpreneurs Network, regional director for Asia-Pacific at Ed2All and managing director of We Host Students Network. She has been organizing Golden Years Expo within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to benefit United Senior Citizens of Ontario and related charitable organizations caring for seniors. The tireless bodies and minds of women are put to work incessantly for the purpose of serving others, for the peace, safety and building of a healthy community, she realized, and sought to celebrate and appreciate their efforts through AFW.
Teenaz Javat (2nd from l) with some of the co-winners of
40 over forty Absolutely Fabulous Women award
A multiple award winning journalist, Javat is known to take "a hard look at topics like the Arab Spring and its impact on Canada or the not-so-uncommon practice of female feticide among some communities in the GTA.” Javat was part of a team at CBC Radio’s Metro Morning that won the Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson National Award. Nearly six years earlier she had earned the Premier’s Award (see "Winning writer,” Zoroastrians Abroad, Parsiana, March 21, 2012).
Having completed a decade at the CBC, as senior writer Javat works on the Alert Desk and produces the ticker headlines that run under their 24-hour News Network TV program. It is her responsibility too to put the running headline on their online platform.
Living in Mississauga with her husband Mahveer who is from Pakistan, she likes to describe herself as "by blood Indian, by bond Pakistani and by choice Canadian.” After studying at Bombay’s Queen Mary School and St Xavier’s College, Javat did her postgraduation from the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics before working as a professional journalist. She migrated to Canada two decades ago with an eight-month-old daughter and has over the years been a stay-at-home mother to Sherezade and Hormuz, a full-time student and later adjunct professor at Sheridan College, a full-time journalist at CBC doing either the 5.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. shift or 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., volunteering in the local school system and editing the newsletter of the Zoroastrian Society of Ontario. Long before she became a journalist, she was a storyteller. Her stories form part of The Shoe Project, a women-only artists collective that document immigration stories through the lens of shoes.
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