Hawa Abdi (March 5, 2014) (Feminist Paper Doll Project 2014)

March 5, 2014
Hawa Abdi

Hawa Abdi was once appropriately described once as "one part Mother Teresa, one part Rambo." She trained in the 1960 and 70s in the former Soviet Union to become a doctor and then to become a lawyer because as she states the women in Somalia had no justice and were dying from poor or no maternal care during pregnancy.

Using her family's lands and jewelry she founded a hospital, community farms and school in 1984. As stated on Bad-ass of the week: "Despite the destruction, war, and subsequent famine ravaging the land all around her, Hawa Abdi spent the next 29 years providing a safe haven for the displaced, turning her tiny one-room shack into a 400 bed hospital, and her 1,300-acre farm into a refugee camp where 90,000 displaced Somalis received free food, clean water, free health care, and a clean place for women to give birth. She built a school that educates 850 children between the ages of 7 and 18. She negotiated for fishing boats and farmland so her people could grow and fish for their food. She personally spent 12-hour days, 7 days a week, delivering babies, treating gunshot wounds, and setting up IV lines for malnourished children, and she's done it all through donations and her own personal funds, without hardly any international funding or aid."
more here: http://www.aquila-style.com/aquilas-picks/stability-and-sustainability-interview-with-dr-hawa-abdi/#f3b9e2c60b82deb02fe568e5b57a99ea/7 and here:http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hawaabdi.html