Al Mahwit, Yemen

Photographer: Ibrahim Malla

Year of Submission: 2016 (Educators Edition) 

Aisha Mohammad Saleh Al-Abbasy, 28, is a volunteer teacher in Al Mahwit, a mountainous region of eastern Yemen. Every day she walks around a kilometre to work, along rough stone paths in temperatures that in summer can rise as high as 45 degrees Celsius. Aisha started teaching three years ago as part of a Yemen Red Crescent programme to reduce illiteracy. Now, every week she works for sixteen hours giving courses in reading and writing, health and baby care to a group of twenty women and children. She became a teacher after being trained by the Yemen Red Crescent, a humanitarian organisation with similar goals to the Red Cross. At high school, her plan had been to become a teacher in a regular school. But after getting married, she decided she wanted to help other women improve their lives.