Azmina
In 2015, Women’s Education Initiative provided a one-time $1700 grant to fund the final semester of Azmina’s graduate studies. She received her masters of arts in gender and peacebuilding at the UN-Mandated University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica. Azmina is from Bangladesh.
Azmina’s work and education
“I am the anomaly who portrays hope, passion and determination to bring about positive changes in the community, despite being a girl. I belong to a country, Bangladesh, where 56.43% of girls drop out from school, where a significant portion of the female population marries between the ages of sixteen and nineteen and do not get to continue their studies. I am not just another statistic like these; I beat all these odds. Taking several gender studies courses, I got to work on numerous projects related to gender issues, including producing documentary films on domestic violence that talked openly about gender-based discrimination. One of my films on domestic violence, Because I am a Girl, which received an international award, portrays how if a husband is violent to his wife, it is either resolved within the family or left unresolved in the name of sanctity of the relationship. All these experiences made me question again and again the gender hierarchy and patriarchal power structure. Consequently, I became interested in issues of gender and social justice, and passionate to tackle, with a positive outlook, persistent challenges regarding gender and development. ”
In 2015, Azmina, from Bangladesh, was a graduate student in gender and peacebuilding programme, at the UN-mandated University for Peace (UPEACE), in Costa Rica. Before that she completed her Bachelor of Arts from Asian University for Women. She has worked as a volunteer teacher at Minmahaw school, supported by a grant from CONNECTHER. She taught filmmaking to migrant Burmese students at a school in western Thailand, on the border with Myanmar. There she helped young refugees make films, some based on interviews with young girls who had been sex trafficked along the Thai-Burma border. Her short film Because I Am a Girl, a powerful indictment of domestic violence in Bangladesh, won the People's Choice Award at CONNECTHER’s Girls Impact the World Film Festival 2013. Here’s a Huffington Post article about one of her projects. She is passionate about her studies and committed to utilizing her educational opportunities to be a change agent in her community and beyond.
Azmina was accepted by UPEACE with a generous 50% tuition waiver in the summer of 2014 and received additional funding from a few individuals, raising $7000 in order to partially pay her tuition fee, which allowed her to complete her first semester. She reached out to our organization for assistance for her second semester and to cover costs for her housing in Costa Rica and books for her courses. Because she is Bangladeshi she could not apply for student loans for her program in Costa Rica. Not only that, because she was in Costa Rica as an international student she could not work and given the uniqueness of the program, didn’t qualify for additional scholarships or grant opportunities.
Women’s Education Initiative is happy to support her final semester at UPEACE, and we are glad that as an organization we can both work long-term with scholars to support their entire education, but also provide support to help women get over their final hurdle to realizing their academic success. Azmina is clearly such a motivated and talented woman, and we are so happy that she will be able to complete her studies at UPEACE. After finishing here at UPEACE she will apply for a Masters in public policy and/or gender and development studies.
Because I am a Girl, winner of the People's Choice Award at CONNECTHER’s Girls Impact the World Film Festival 2013
One of the films Azmina helped produce: An interview conducted as part of a research project about gender discrimination by students of the Access Academy / Asian University for Women.
UN-Mandated University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica
Read Other Scholar Updates Here
