Seema Azis is one of the most prominent business leaders in South Asia. However, she is mostly known for her work in improving the education sector of Pakistan. Aziz runs more than 700 English medium schools in Pakistan for the underprivileged.

Dr. Habiba Sarabi © Ali Sher

A few months ago we have published the story of Dr Habiba Sarabi, who became Afghanistan’s first female provincial governor, appointed by the then President Hamid Karzai in 2005. She governed Bamyan and used this platform to promote the rich cultural heritage of the province.  In this one-on-one Dr Sarabi shares her extraordinary journey towards becoming one of the foremost female voices in the Afghan politics right now.

Islamic extremists stormed a remote boarding school in northeast Nigeria last week and kidnapped 230 girls and young women.

I’ve been helping out at Deutsche Welle in the last few weeks and have become very interested in Womentalkonline, a blog and Facebook page that a small team of editors does for women across Asia. It inspired me to write a little about what my school is doing to help girls and women in Africa. Maybe something like this can be done in Asia. Perhaps it is already happening. It would be nice to find out more about this kind of thing.

As a child, I often imagined I would die in front of my family or class mates and they would express their love to me and grieve over my dead body. This thought gave me a lot of satisfaction and even though I never really wished to be dead, just thinking I could be close to death assured me that I was loved and cared for.

Tamana Jamily writes about her experiences at school and the difficulties women and girls in Afghanistan face. The problems they face in their homes and families have not helped improve their situation.

Abha Mondhe had a tough time in school, struggling with Math and Chemistry. To top it all, her handwriting was an eyesore. She remembers how she got inspired and finally achieved the unthinkable-for her.