As we’ve mentioned before, 794 new students are joining the Smith community this fall. Among them, are a record number of international students. Two transfer students with international ties are profiled here.
Mame Sourang joins Smith from Brooklyn, New York. Having grown up in Senegal, Mame knows what it is like to live with conservative gender roles and to lack proper health treatment. After interning at the Bronx-based Montefiore Health Opportunity program, Mame presented a lecture on the health risks of female genital mutilation and circumcision, an issue for African women. A women’s health advocate, Mame is interested in medicine and women’s issues.
Joining Mame at Smith in the fall is Meena Yousufzy of Kabul, Afghanistan. Meena faced gender discrimination in her native Afghanistan and decided to study in the United States. She sought out and earned scholarships to study in the U.S. at Tomkins Courtland Community College in New York.
While in the U.S., Meena has sought to end gender discrimination in her native country by serving on the board of directors for the School of Leadership Afghanistan, a non-profit that hopes to “prepare the very best Afghan students for study in the U.S. and abroad so that they may return home to become future leaders of Afghanistan,” and writing for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, which “is aimed at allowing Afghan women to have a direct voice in the world.”
We welcome Mame, Meena, and all incoming students to Smith!
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