Born in Islampur, Swat in 1976 to a low-income family, Hazer began working as a firewood collector at the age of eight to support his family and then as a weaver at 16. Although working over 9 hours a day, he could never accumulate enough cash to feed his family. Witnessing the exploitation of the weaving community at the hands of the middlemen, Hazer realized that the solution had to come from within the affected community. He worked as a weaver until the age of 24, and studied the community’s problems to escape the cycle of debt and exploitation. Managing to break free from the hold of the middleman, Hazer attended school. In college he began working as a pump operator at the Public ...