Fatuma Omar, 15, School Meals Program, Somalia
Fatuma Omar, 15, School Meals Program, Somalia
But Fatuma is no ordinary Somali girl. Despite her humble roots, she is now attending Nairobi's best girls' school and hopes to become a doctor someday. “When I complete my secondary education, I want to go to university, and in university I want to do medicine, I want to be a doctor,” she says. Fatuma won a full scholarship to the Kenya Girls High School after receiving a high score on her exams.
Fatuma grew up in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp. She attended one of the schools in the camp and remembers the food she received each day as part of WFP's School Meals Program. All over the world, these programs have been shown to drastically improve school attendance and performance. “We used to drink porridge in class, and it helped us," she says. "You find yourself hungry, and you are in class, and you have lessons to revise and do all that stuff... In Dadaab you depend on that food."
Fatuma was able to leave Dadaab thanks to her exceptional intelligence and the unlikely determination of her mother. In a world where women typically marry young, Fosio Jama Salat insisted that her daughter would be educated. “It was me that was taking care that she should not marry. I want her to learn something,” Jama Salat says. “If she studies something, she can first help herself and then help her mother. Because ignorance means darkness.”
Although the adjustment to life in Kenya has been difficult, Fatuma is determined to make the most of her chance to fulfill what should have been impossible dreams. She realizes that she is an important example to those Somali girls she has left behind in Dadaab. Fatuma’s story gives them hope.
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