Azizullah Royesh (known as Aziz Royesh, fa, عزیز رویش) is a
Hazara, social activist, teacher and writer from
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
.
Biography
Aziz Royesh was born in 1969 in
Fazel Baig,
Kabul, Afghanistan
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...
. After leaving school at age 10, he travelled to
Ghazni Province
Ghazni (Dari: ) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in southeastern Afghanistan. The province contains 19 districts, encompassing over a thousand villages and roughly 1.3 million people, making it the 5th most populous province. Th ...
before moving to
Quetta
Quetta (; ur, ; ; ps, کوټه) is the tenth most populous city in Pakistan with a population of over 1.1 million. It is situated in south-west of the country close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is the capital of ...
,
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...
alone at age 11. Because Royesh had no family in Quetta, he worked in tailor shops, bakeries, and small factories to support himself. Unable to continue his formal education, he continued to study what he could on his own outside his work.
At the age of 16, he returned to Afghanistan and established five schools in Ghazni province. With the reemergence of the
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pasht ...
in 1994, he returned to Pakistan and established th
Marefat High Schoolfor
Afghanistani Refugees in Pakistan. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Marefat High School was transferred to Kabul's
Dashte Barchi
Dashte Barchi ( prs, دشت برچی) is a settlement located in western Kabul, Afghanistan. Previously barren and agricultural, Dashte Barchi became populated in the early 2000s by newcomers from the provinces, mostly ethnic Hazaras from Maidan ...
while a branch in Pakistan remained open.
The Marefat School and Royesh are subjects of a non-fiction work, "The Last Thousand: One School's Promise in a Nation at War" (2016) by American writer Jeffrey E. Stern.
Best Teacher in the World
In 2015 he was nominated the Best Teacher of the Year in the world.
Publications
* A book in
Dari language, '' prs, "بگذار نفس بکشم"
''
See also
*
List of Hazara people
Hazara people make up the second or third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan with 8–12 million population, making 20%–25% of the total population of Afghanistan (Some suggest the real population might reach 30%) where they mainly inhabit the ...
References
External links
*
www.afghan-bios.infoworldfellows.yale.edu/Azizullah Royesh
{{DEFAULTSORT:Royesh, Aziz
Hazara writers
Hazara politicians
People from Kabul
1970 births
Living people