Riffat Arif was 13 years old when her own teachers discriminated against her for being Christian at her school in Gujranwala, Pakistan, and ended up expelling her.
She could have held on to resentment. Instead, she began teaching her younger sister and the neighborhood girls for free in her backyard.
She handed out flyers door to door while working as a child laborer during the day to cover expenses, and taught at night.
Without having finished school, she educated herself until earning two master’s degrees from the University of Punjab.
What began as an improvised classroom is now a school that provides free education to more than 200 children.
On November 8, 2023, at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, Sister Zeph was chosen from among more than 7,000 teachers from 130 countries and became the first Pakistani to win the Global Teacher Prize, one million dollars that she decided to invest in more classrooms for girls who, like her once, had no one else.
