Mr. Azizullah Royesh, a teacher from Afghanistan and a finalist for the Global Teacher Prize, started facing adversity at 12. He was forced to leave Afghanistan when the Soviet Union invaded. The last words his father told him were ”I wish that you stay alive.”

After fleeing to Pakistan, he started teaching at the age of 16 so that he could share his literacy with the other refugees. Throughout his career as a teacher, he also was faced with stressful situations. In one situation, many of his female students were protesting a controversial law passed by the clerics. The clerics, who drafted the law, stormed his school, tried to burn it, and called for his execution. He later moved back to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime.