Hidaya Ibrahim is a recent graduate of New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus. She is passionate about quality education access in Ethiopia and is keen on using her knowledge to serve the wider Ethiopian community.
The opportunity to follow higher education outside of her country to explore a curriculum significantly different from one she was accustomed to, along with recognizing the problems with Ethiopia’s education system has lead her to be passionate about driving change in education. While at New York University, she studied Social Research and Public Policy.
Hidaya co-founded Qine Association for Promoting Education Quality (QAPEQ) which organizes forums that bring representatives of governmental authorities and private educational institutions together with students for a unique consultation on the quality of Ethiopian education. It also runs free capacity building projects for students to help develop essential academic skills such as critical thinking, analytic research, and writing. These projects are also assumed by member schools via the Qine Club Network, which is overlooked by QAPEQ. More than 400 students from 11 different high schools throughout Ethiopia have benefited from the program so far.
As an Anzisha fellow, Hadiya has been featured on CNN, Rising Africa and All Africa. She has also been interviewed on radio stations like Afro FM 105.3 and EBC 104.7.Hidaya is passionate about the work that she does with QAPEQ. According to Hidaya, ” QAPEQ was founded in 2013 by Ethiopian students to challenge the trend in student repetition, dropout, and under-performance.”