Global Teacher Prize 2016 - Top Ten Finalists | Page 7

Aqeela Asifi
Kot Chandana refugee camp, Punjab, Pakistan

Born to a liberal family in Kabul and educated in Kandahar at the time when
education in Afghanistan was free and for all, Aqeela trained as a teacher but was
forced to leave the country when the Taliban took over in 1992. When she arrived as
a refugee at the Kot Chandana camp in Pakistan there were no operational schools
in the local area. Strongly conservative attitudes meant the education of girls was
frowned upon and female teachers were unheard of.

Aqeela set up a school in a borrowed tent and worked hard to overcome resistance
and negative attitudes. Twenty families agreed to their daughters being educated
and Aqeela initially focused on teaching noncontroversial subjects such as personal
hygiene, home management skills and religious education. After gaining the trust of
the community, Aqeela was able to introduce literacy, Dari language, mathematics,
geography and history. There was no money for resources like blackboards so Aqeela
stitched pieces of cloth with handwritten text to the tent walls and wrote books by
hand at night. Her students traced their first words in dust on the floor.

Today, there are nine schools in the camp with many female teachers and over 1,500
students including 900 girls. With education, early and forced marriages in the
community have declined. Aqeela’s school has produced over 1,000 graduates
(mainly Afghan refugee girls, but also local Pakistani children). Some have become
doctors, engineers, government officials and teachers in Afghanistan.

Aqeela was presented with the UNHCR’s Nansen Refugee Award in 2015.

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