Tafan Ako

Taffan Ako came to Sweden as a political refugee when she was three years old. she and her mother fled the war in Iraq during the period of the then dictator Saddam Hussein carried out the mass murder on the Kurds. They could no longer stay as we were the biggest targets for the then Bath regime to kill. They spent many months in refugee camps without food and shelter. They took the same deadly path many refugees have done today. They hid us in the trucks, was among the dead bodies and taken small rubber boats to cross the sea.
Growing up in Sweden, she got to experience everything a child could ask for when you just fled a war. When she first started elementary school in Sweden, that was when the first seed was planted in her. The seed that made me do the work she do today to prevent other children going through what she went through as a child.
Today she call herself a social entrepreneur, lecturer and proud appointed ONE YOUNG WORLD ambassador for Sweden and Kurdistan. After high school, she decided, and returned to the person she once was. She chose and move back to Kurdistan in Irak to be able to put her passion for human rights to work as the humanitarian crisis got worse and worse. The war with ISIS had just broken out and she worked as a volunteer for the UNHCR and several local organizations in various refugee camps in Syria and Iraq. she became a UN women ambassador for Sweden eventually. She focused on women as sex slaves escaped from ISIS barbarism. She was also through her own association that she started there, starting to gather and lecture about young leadership and youths against extremism. In nearly 3 years she has worked intensely and closely with these children and women. she and her mother were in the same situation of not many years ago. Social media is a big tool of mine as she has gained over 25 000 peoples support just through Instagram, where she can share what she has learned abroad, share her projects, how people can help and get engaged and enlighten others about the big wave of violent extremism and racism going on in the world right now.

Today, She stand with her own foundation, she can now finance her own integration and support projects for children arriving to Europe, to young girls to get help when put through honor based violence and so much more. Anything so they won’t go through what she did and at the same time engage the youth of Sweden in her community to fight against violent extremism and build bridges instead. She found her goals and purpose in life at 16 and have not stopped her activism ever since. Her activism is deeply rooted in her childhood and what she went through but today she has turned all of that around, trying to bring change for all women and young girls she meet daily in her work in Iraq, Sweden, France, Kurdistan, Cambodia and many more places. This is her absolute passion and she cannot be more proud to help empower younger girls and build safer environments for them in her work!