Mama Hawa: Nansen Refugee Award

Aden Mohamed Dept: A former refugee herself, Mohamed, better known now as Mama Hawa, packed up with her husband in 1995 and returned to her strife-riven homeland to launch an education and vocational centre, according to The Star. My father was special when it comes to girls, said Mohamed, 63, speaking by phone from a hospital in Kenya where she is recovering from brain surgery. I remember the elders, his friends, asking: Why do you want to send your girls to school? And my father used to say, Leave my girls alone and hawa Aden Mohamed traded a safe life in Toronto for war-torn Somalia because she was determined to see education transform the lives of girls and women in her homeland. On Tuesday, Mohamed was named winner of the United Nations 2012 Nansen Refugee Award for her exceptional, tireless and inspiring humanitarian work for Somalia s refugee and displaced girls and women, work performed under incredibly difficult and challenging circumstances in a country battered by decades of violence, conflict and human rights abuses. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.