Aqeela Asifi, the 2015 UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award winner, was recognized for her courageous work and significant contribution to refugee girls’ education. She received a special invitation to attend the 2015 WISE Summit (World Innovation Summit for Education), which is sponsored by the Qatar Foundation and chaired by Her Highness Sheikha Moza.
When Aqeela arrived in Kot Chandana refugee village in Punjab, Pakistan 23 years ago, she began an important journey seeking ways to enable girls within her community to access primary and secondary education. To date, her hard work, sensitivity to cultural and religious values, and persistence have resulted in one thousand girls having the opportunity to attend her school at both middle and secondary level, receiving national lower secondary certification. Two generations of graduates have passed through her school, going on to become teachers, pursue further education and support their families, in Pakistan as well as upon their return to Afghanistan.
Aqeela’s remarkable contribution to girls’ education caught the attention of the WISE committee, earning her an invitation to Doha to participate in the WISE 2015 summit focused on “Investing for Impact: Quality Education for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth.”
WISE, initiated in 2009, is a pivotal platform, which brings together leading governments, multi-lateral organizations, think-tanks, NGOs, private corporations and key individuals to discuss innovations within education and their potential to enhance learning globally.
Our team had the opportunity to interview Aqeela during the summit, to gain her perspective on the landscape of educational innovations and their relevance for displaced communities.
AK: Do you feel events like WISE hold a value in encouraging more innovation in education?
AA: WISE is a platform where people from all over the world come and share their views, opinions, and ideas with each other. As you know, the dynamics, situation, and circumstances in every country and every region of the world are different, so people come up with approaches that are relevant for their part of the world. However, we might not be aware of these approaches until we attend the conference and meet people. So this is a good platform for people from across the world to come and share their ideas with each other. That’s how we can learn from each other, and that’s how we can adopt new approaches in education that might be equally beneficial for our part of the world.
What I particularly liked was when one participant in the teachers training session said that a teacher should not think that he or she doesn’t need to learn themselves. No matter how great a teacher you are, the learning process continues. So every teacher should continue to learn, because a teacher’s knowledge is what he or she transfers to the next generation. This is a message that I would like to take to my teachers: that they should work on their learning as well.
This summit was particularly useful because I had the opportunity to find out about different people’s opinions, different approaches, and that really helped shape the work on my project. I am leaving this conference with rich resources – in terms of knowledge – that I will utilize and implement in my area.
AK: What were the main trends & challenges raised at WISE, that you feel are most relevant for Afghan refugees?
AA: I was particularly moved when a short video of schools being destroyed in conflicts was played during one of the sessions. At one particular moment in the video, when a school was hit by a rocket, I was so moved. I wanted to cry because it was like a flashback. It reminded me of a day when I was teaching in Kabul and exactly the same situation arose when a nearby building was hit by a mortar shell and the windows of our school were smashed. There was so much chaos. The panic and the anxiety that I saw in the video reminded me of that time. I cannot forget the faces of the children in the video because I can closely relate to that. This is something that I think Afghanistan is still facing. During and after conflict, children cannot go to school because of instability and their parents’ concern for their safety. This is the challenge that I related to Afghanistan.
Before coming to WISE, I thought Afghanistan and Pakistan were the only countries where girls faced difficulties in demanding or accessing education. But I was surprised to hear different people from all around the world, talking about similar problems for girls. This was one of the challenges and trends I could relate to Afghanistan, because the country has been at war for the past 35 years and it’s not easy for Afghan people to come out of that. But I must commend the people of Afghanistan. Despite the war and all the challenges, we [Afghanistan] have still produced people that are highly qualified and making the country proud.
One day, when I was teaching in Kandahar, we were warned by the military to evacuate the school because a mortar might hit us. Everyone started running for their lives. I rushed to my house, which was close to the school. The rocket landed very close to my house, and smashed the windows. The moment I entered the house, I saw my youngest son surrounded by broken pieces of glass. Luckily a woman from the neighborhood, who happened to be at my house at the time of the incident held my son and he survived. So whenever I hear about schools being targeted, or countries being attacked, the bitter memory comes to me and I can never forget that it was in these kinds of circumstances that we continued to study.
AK: What was the greatest innovation that you learned about at WISE that you think could benefit displaced learners?
AA: It is hard for me to pick one thing out of so many, meeting with different people from every corner of the world itself was a great innovative approach to learn from each other’s experiences. Experts talked at length about challenges they face in the sector of education and provided suggestions on how to overcome those challenges. I believe there are no quick fixes when it comes to addressing some of the deep rooted cultural challenges we are facing here (Pakistan, Afghanistan) but there is a dawn after every dusk. Collectively and gradually we will be able to resolve challenges, especially in the area of girls’ education. One of the speakers at the last session said that if Dr. Sakena Yacoobi, 2015 WISE Prize Winner, could do so many things with so few resources, why can’t we, with a lot of resources, do even half of what Sakena did. This was something that I appreciated the most. I started with very little too, and I realized that scarcity of resources cannot stop you from achieving your dream as long as there is a determination to keep going.
AK: What was the most important take-away from WISE that you feel every refugee student should hear?
AA: One thing that I will take away with me is to tell my students that you are not alone. The whole world talks about your betterment. The whole world is talking about education, and enabling you to have access, if not to higher education, at least to basic education. It is so encouraging to see people talking about getting every child to school. I will tell them to work hard because they have a lot of people behind them, who want to make their dreams come true and to change them into a reality.
I will tell my students what I observed in this conference is that the world has developed a lot, and this development is only possible through education. So if we want to be on a par with the rest of the world it’s only possible through education. I’ll tell them that they have to work even harder with the limited resources they have.
AK: Was there anything that inspired you at WISE that you plan to take back to share with your community? Or incorporate in your project?
AA: I was very happy when I heard some of the speakers talking about getting education to the doorstep of people displaced by war. This was exactly what I was planning for my project before coming to the summit. For the Afghan part of my project, I want to set up established home-based schools, for those children who cannot go to school either because of distance and poverty or cultural restrictions.
I was very happy that some of the speakers highlighted the idea of having informal education setups inside homes or closer to where people live. This is something that really helped me focus on my project in Afghanistan. Of course I cannot do it alone. So I will work on convincing communities to provide areas where I could create informal learning spaces. I need support and expertise from UNHCR and other agencies to help give more clarity on how I could set up such schools, especially for children who were never able to go to school when they were refugees and, now that they’re returnees, they don’t have access.
AK: Do you feel that girls’ education was sufficiently addressed at WISE?
AA: What inspired me the most was that I had never seen such a good representation of women ever in my life, in the way that they were present here. There were forums where I saw more women than men – something that we miss in our part of the world. So when so many women are talking about girls’ education and girls’ rights, the message gets even stronger. And this gives girls hope and courage to work even harder to reach the level where they can fight for their own rights. The presence of Michelle Obama and her story of how she was discouraged as a young woman and told that she cannot become anything, yet she is now at the White House, was so inspirational. This is a strong message that I will take with me. Nothing is impossible in this world; girls shouldn’t give up, they should continue their struggle because hope sustains the world, and they should just work harder.
There is a misperception about Arab countries restricting girls from acquiring education. This perception was proven wrong when I saw her Highness Sheikha Mozah, strongly representing and advocating for girls’ education. I was really inspired, and the misperception I had before coming here, about Arabs also following the same norms we do, has completely changed.
Photo credit: UNHCR/Sebastian Rich
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