After fleeing home: Afghan woman masters school leaving certificate and receives her first certificate - at the age of 33

What others learn in nine school years, Sediqa Ismaili has acquired in a few months.

The 33-year-old Afghan finished high school as an external student.

This is a first step on the way to your career choice.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen - Sediqa Ismaili has a dream. She wants to work with children, as a nurse or educator. She keeps talking about it, asking in her new home how this wish can become a reality. The answers she receives from the various offices in Garmisch-Partenkirchen: sobering. After all, the basic requirement for vocational training is a school leaving certificate. But the young woman cannot show that. She was not allowed to attend classes in Afghanistan, mainly out of fear of the Taliban. The members of the terror group do everything they can to prevent girls from going to school and to suppress women. One reason why she, her husband Hamid Hussain Sadiqi and their daughter fled the crisis-ridden country in 2015, where fierce fighting continues.

The family found a new home in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Her second daughter was born here.

And here Sediqa Ismaili dared to speak her dream out loud.

She lives with her family in their own apartment.

Her husband has now got his driver's license and has found work.

The twelve-year-old daughter attends secondary school, her three-and-a-half-year-old sister will go to kindergarten in the fall.

However, the now 33-year-old initially saw no perspective for herself, especially no professional one.

Shined in all subjects

There are now. Ismaili achieved this on his own initiative. "You are an open, self-confident woman willing to integrate and willing to work hard," says Sebastian Schranner. The teacher at the Bürgermeister-Schütte-Schule showed the young woman a feasible way to graduate from high school - as an external person. Now he handed her the testimony that shows that she has acquired the material that others learn in nine years of school in the past four months. "It was a total pleasure to test them," emphasizes Schranner. She mastered math, German, AWT (work, economics and technology) as well as GSE (history, social studies and geography). "She really shone in all subjects."

A success in which the "Frau und Beruf GmbH" played a major role.

This implements the SiB (Strong in the Job) program in the district, which is financed by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs and the European Social Fund.

“Sediqa was desperate,” recalls project manager Aline Manthey of the first meeting last year.

She and her colleague Ernestine Stadler were immediately impressed by the young woman who had long since taught herself German.

“She is so enthusiastic about the language that she writes down monstrous words like 'communication skills' in her vocabulary book,” says Manthey.

Stadler finds her protégé “very ambitious”.

She practiced counting with her older daughter, learned basic arithmetic and writing.

A beginning that didn't really bring her closer to her goal.

Plan: start training as soon as possible

That's why Manthey and Stadler were looking for a way that Ismaili could work in her dream job. Laura Erben, the district's integration officer, also pulled out all the stops for this. Ismaili's story calls her "a fine example of equal opportunities". In Schranner they found another supporter who explained to Ismaili the procedure for the exam and, above all, the preparation for it. With the help of Manthey and Stadler, the mother of two found a number of tutors who studied with her in the Hotel Garmischer Hof, while three and a half year old Maryam sat next to it and played well. “She graduated with her will, hard work and intelligence,” says Schranner. Now she can set a course for her dream job.

The Afghan knows that there is still a long way to go.

“First I want to improve my German a bit,” she says.

Then she would like to start training as quickly as possible.

Her husband, who is “very proud” of her, also supports her in this.

“It is very fortunate that we are now in Germany.” In a country where there is peace and where women have the same opportunities as men.

It is lucky.

For her, but also for her daughters, to whom all options are now open.

This story

is not an isolated case.

Anyone who needs help in learning

their dream

job can reach Frau und Beruf GmbH on

0 88 21/9 43 16 99 and gap@frau-und-beruf.net.