Zaineb Afkhkhar is a Moroccan rural girl and comes from a village close to ‘Toubkal’, the highest pick of north Africa. To join high school, Zaineb had to move away from her family to another village.

Back then, only boys used to attend high school, so everyone was telling her that she would not stand a chance. But she worked hard and graduated with honor, eventually convincing her parents that, with the help of her teachers, she could do even better in high school. In 2015, she joined a shelter created by the NGO Relais Instruction education Maroc (RIM) to attend high school and in 2018 obtained her baccalaureate with honors.

Thanks to her high grades and the strong support by RIM, she received a full scholarship to attend Mohammed 6 polytechnic university, one of the best universities in Morocco. She studied data science for 3 years and in 2021 she joined the Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP) group for a 5-month internship. Zaineb Afkhkhar graduated in 2021, and is currently pursuing her studies as a master degree student in modelling and data science.

She believes that every girl has the potential to be who she wants to be in life and that no one should be left behind. In the last 4 years she has been working alongside different NGOs to help girls who are facing the same challenges that she did, and she hopes to be a role model for girls who may need to convince their parents to let them study.