Articles of Interest

Rethinking urban housing design is a tall task for a teenager, but that didn’t deter Academy student Insha Ladha. After seeing first-hand the difficult living conditions in an informal housing settlement in Hyderabad, Insha decided to focus her grade 10 personal project on rethinking settlement design to improve the residents’ quality of life. Through their personal projects, Insha and many of her peers at the Academies are tackling challenging social issues head-on.

Science has become year 6 student Eden Ngatata’s favourite subject, thanks to Educating Girls in Science, an Aga Khan Academy Mombasa outreach programme. In addition to developing girls’ skills and interest in the sciences, the programme is fostering their self-confidence and determination. “I’m aiming higher and higher so that the sky is the limit,” says Eden, “but I think for us girls, we have no limit.”

By bringing teachers from different cultures together with students, the teacher exchange programme works towards His Highness’s vision of a network of Academies that foster creativity, curiosity and inquiry rooted in “a pluralistic tradition in which other views, ethnicities, religions and perspectives are valued.”

“It has really given me a way to think,” says one student of his Model United Nations experience at Aga Khan Academy Mombasa. Students at the Academies in both Mombasa and Hyderabad are passionately involved with Model United Nations. In the process, they are learning valuable leadership lessons: honing their knowledge about the world, practicing public speaking, debating world issues and collaborating on solutions to real-world problems.